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CASTNER HANWAY. ELIJAH LEWIS. 

TAKEN SOON AFTER THE TREASON TRIALS. 



JOSEPH SCARLET. 



THE CHRISTIANA RIOT 



AND 



THE TREASON TRIALS 

OF 1851 

AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 



BY 



W. U. HENSEL 



Prepared and Published for the Commemoration 
OF THESE Events, September 9, 1911 



Press of 

The New Era Printing Company 

Lancaster, Pa. 

I9II 



/ / 



1 



ICI.A207193 



PEEFACE. 

The preparation of this sketch and contribution to our 
local history had been long contemplated by the Editor and 
Compiler. Born near the locality where the events occurred 
which are its subject, he has been for more than half a cen- 
tury intimately related with their associations. He has re- 
gard for the integrity of motive which alike animated both 
parties to the conflict. It was a miniature of the great 
struggle of opposing ideas that culminated in the shock of 
Civil War, and was only settled by that stern arbiter. He 
rejoices that what seemed to be an irrepressible conflict be- 
tween Law and Liberty at last ended in Peace. To help to 
perpetuate that condition between long-estranged neighbors 
and kin, this offering is made to the work of the Lancaster 
County Historical Society. 

While it has been written and published for that Society, 
no responsibility for anything it contains or for its promulga- 
tion attaches to any one except the author. Where opinions 
are expressed — and they have been generally avoided as 
far as possible in disputed matters — he alone is responsible. 
Where facts are stated, except upon authority expressly 
named, he accepts the risk of refutation. In all cases he has 
tried to ascertain and to tell the exact truth. He worked in 
no other spirit and for no other purpose ; and wherein he has 
failed his is all the blame. 

W. U. H. 

"Bleak House," 
August 12, 1911. 



THE CHRISTIANA RIOT. 



CHAPTER I. 

Inteoductoey. 



I propose to write the history of the so-called " Christiana 
Riot" and "Treason Trials" of 1851, as they occurred — 
without partiality, prejudice or apology, for or against any 
of those who participated in them. As is inevitable in all 
such collisions, there were, on either side of the border 
troubles of that period, men of high principle and right 
motive and also rowdies and adventurers, disposed to resort 
to ruthless violence for purposes of sordid gain. There were 
slave-masters who sincerely believed in the righteousness of 
an institution of ancient origin, while even the more saga- 
cious of their class recognized it as at variance with the 
divine law and the trend of Christian civilization, and in- 
evitably doomed to extinction. There were on this side of 
the line many who, believing themselves humanitarians, were 
mere mischievous agitators, lawless in deed and treasonable 
in design, reckless of those rights of property which are as 
sacred in regard of the law as the rights of man. There were, 
too, in the Korth wicked slave catchers and kidnappers whose 
brutalities aroused the just resentment of the communities 
in which they operated, even when they kept within the 
limits of strict and technical legal rights. 

It was of course impossible, as Mr. Lincoln pointed out, 
for the republic to endure forever half slave and half free 
— to run a geographical marker through a great and compli- 
cated moral, economic and political issue — especially in 
1 1 



2 THE CHEISTIANA RIOT. 

view of the far flung border line and the rapidly increasing 
development of communication and transmission. 

If, however, all the great statesmen, economists and 
churchmen who had struggled with the slavery question 
since the formation of the Union were unable to solve it, 
without the awful carnage of a tremendous and long lasting 
civil war, can it be the cause of special wonder that a hand- 
ful of Marylanders in lawful search of their escaped prop- 
erty, and a larger group of free and fugitive negroes, with 
the "embattled farmers" who sympathized with them, 
should have made the hills of this peaceful Chester Valley 
echo with gun shots and stained its soil with blood, when 
Man and Master met in final and fatal contest for what each 
had been taught was his right? 

ISTumerous attempts have been made to publish reports of 
this incident which would serve the purposes of permanent 
history ; and, while they have all been helpful, none has been 
complete. On his return to Maryland after his failure to 
convict Hanway and the others of treason. Attorney General 
Robert J. Brent, of Maryland, made an elaborate official 
report to Governor E. Louis Lowe, who in turn submitted 
it, with extended comments of his own, to the General As- 
sembly of Maryland, January 7, 1852. From the stand- 
point of the lawyer and the chief executive of a slave state, 
both are able deliverances. Aroused by their version of the 
affair, and especially by their comments on the treason trial, 
and impatient over the delay in publishing the official report 
of it, W. Arthur Jackson, junior counsel for the defendant, 
printed a pamphlet review of it, which shows much ability, 
has great value and has become very rare. The official pho- 
nographic report of the trial, by James J. Robbins, of the 
Philadelphia bar (King & Baird, 1852), is of course a 
copious fountain of exact information — as well as an inter- 
esting exhibit of the " reportorial " efficiency of that day. 
From all of these I have felt at liberty to draw largely. 



INTKODTJCTORY. d 

"A True Story of the Christiana Eiot," by David E. 
Forbes, 1898, tinged with sectional prejudice, has much 
matter that was well worthy of preservation, and the new 
facts it contains, if verified, I have freely used. All of the 
general political histories of the period refer to the Christi- 
ana tragedy as having significance in the intense agitation 
of the issue raised by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Fred. 
Douglass ' stories of his life and time ; William Still's 
"Underground Eailroad," and Dr. E. C. Smedley's "His- 
tory of the UndergTound Eailroad " have also been subjects 
of my levy for aid. To them, however, have been added 
the personal reminiscences of Dr. J. W. Houston, Thomas 
Whitson, Esq., Ambrose Pownall, Charles Dingee, Gilbert 
Bushong, Peter Woods, William P. Brinton, Cyrus Brinton 
and many other residents of the neighborhood in which the 
riot occurred and from which the prisoners in the trials for 
life were taken. Access has been had to the diaries and 
family records of the Pownall, Hanway, Lewis and Gorsuch 
families ; and many other original sources of information, 
including the local and metropolitan newspapers of that day, 
whose enterprise and impartiality were somewhat variable. 
Some of them published full reports of the trial. 

For the first time, however, I think, the subject has been 
studied with some care and consideration for the facts as 
disclosed and from the point of view occupied at the home of 
the Gorsuches. The family of Dr. F. G. Mitchell, whose 
wife is a daughter of Dickinson Gorsuch, and who now owns 
the property then of her grandfather, Edward Gorsuch, 
from which the slaves fled, have been especially gi'acious and 
helpful, withal fair and generous in their attitude toward an 
event which brought brutal death to one ancestor and long 
suffering to another. 

J. Wesley Knight, long resident of the neighborhood of 
Monkton and Glencoe, Maryland, and who was under the 
roof of the Gorsuch homestead when the slaves escaped, has 



1 THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 

given me much accurate information as to their previous 
condition of servitude. 

If their contribution to the history of the encounter and 
the events preceding it presents the relation of the Southern- 
ers to it in a far more favorable light than has hitherto 
attended its narration, no fair-minded student of history can 
object to the whole truth, even at this late day. That the Gor- 
such runaways were not heroic and scarcely even pictur- 
esque characters; and that their owners were humane and 
Christian people, and not the brutal slave traders and cruel 
taskmasters who figured in much of the anti-slavery fiction, 
can no longer be doubted. But if the Lancaster County 
Historical Society exists for any purpose it is illustrated in 
its apt motto : " History herself as seen in her own work- 
shop." Every such shop must show some chips and filings ; 
and occasionally the more these abound the better will be 
the craftsman's product. I cannot hope — and I certainly 
do not desire — this should be the " last word " about the 
" Christiana Riot " ; but the occasion of its Sixtieth Anni- 
versary and the Commemoration seemed to call for a his- 
torical review up to date ; and the story of its few survivors 
had to be caught before it was lost. 

It may be confidently predicted that when our long-looked- 
for local Stronghand in imaginative literature shall seek for 
a theme near at home, he will find it in the dramatic story 
of the " Christiana Riot " ; or when some gifted Lancaster 
County Son of Song shall arise and strike the trembling 
harp strings, the scene of his epic will follow the winding 
Octoraro and lie along the track of the Fugitive Slave. 



CHAPTEK II. 

The Law of the Land. 

The Early Compromises of the Constitution — Pennsylvania 's Move 
Toward Abolition — The Act of 1826 — The Prigg Case — Border 
Troubles — The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 — Wrongs of Escaped 
Slaves and Eights of Their Owners. 

It is entirely unnecessary for the purposes of this par- 
ticular story to enlarge upon, or to review at length, the long 
debate, the innumerable compromises, the many makeshifts 
and the unending controversies which attended the discus- 
sion of the slavery question from the agitation and adoption 
of the Federal Constitution to the enactment of the Fugitive 
Slave Law of 1850 — and which then left it utterly unsettled. 
It is, however, important that a few plain landmarks of the 
law be kept in sight to guide one who would fitly study the 
general history of the times and fairly estimate the signifi- 
cance of the local events to be narrated. 

The Union of the States was only effected by the adoption 
of Art. IV ; the general purpose of which was to require each 
State to give full faith and credit to the public acts and 
records of other States. The exact language of its section 
3 was: 

" 'No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under 
the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Conse- 
quence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from 
such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim 
of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." 

No union could have been effected without this agreement. 
Whether that federation was a contract from which any 
party to it could retire, for a violation of it by other parties 
thereto, need not be discussed here. The affirmative of that 

5 



b THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

proposition was not the creed of any particular party or 
section. It was originally maintained by iN'ew England 
Federalists; it was later defended by Soutkern Democrats; 
it was at last decided adversely in battle and by the sword. 
While there is now general acquiescence in the result, the 
final decision was not the prevailing doctrine of the people 
of the United States in 1851. 

Under the Constitution the Eight to Reclaim the fugitive 
slave was no more unmistakable than the Duty to Return 
him. The Law of the Land gave to each State the right to 
regulate its own domestic institutions ; and that right was 
expressly recognized and guaranteed even by the Republican 
party and by Abraham Lincoln long after the outbreak of 
the Civil War. The slavery questions upon which political 
parties differed up to 1851 were not disputes as to the rights 
of slave owners and slaves in Slave States; nor as to the 
rights of slave owners against their escaped slaves in Free 
States, but as to the extension of slavery and the status of 
the institution in the IsTatioual territories. 

The prevailing popular misapprehension on this subject 
may be easily pardoned when it is observed that so eminent 
an authority as Oswald Garrison Villard, in his recent excel- 
lent biography of John Brown, says the Fugitive Slave Law 
of 1850 "made legal in the jSTorth the rendition of negroes 
who had found their way to Free States." That proposition 
was recogTiized by all political parties from 1Y93 to 1863. 

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was passed in strict con- 
formity with the Constitution of the United States; and it 
impressed upon the executive authorities of the several States 
the duty of arrest, and upon their magistrates the obliga- 
tion to hear and commit the fugitives for return. That act 
was generally recognized as just in its essence and object. 
As late as 1850 even the Free Soil party assented to the 
legal principle it involved. In execution, however, its pro- 
cesses were greatly abused; unlawful seizures, unwarranted 




DICKINSON GORSUCH. 
DANGEROUSLY WOUNDED IN THE RIOT 



THE LAW OF THE LAND. I 

reclamations and ruthless kidnappings were common occur- 
rences in the lower parts of the Border States along the line 
of Slavery and Freedom. Pennsylvania, after respectful 
hearing of the Maryland Commissioners and due considera- 
tion for their suggestions, enacted the Act of 1826, which 
made the State Courts the arbiters of claims to fugitives; 
forbade justices to exercise these powers; and, in the line of 
Pennsylvania's movements since 1780 to extinguish slavery 
and protect free persons, it made the free-bom children of 
escaped slaves citizens of Pennsylvania and put them under 
its protection. 

This legislation accorded with judicial decisions of the 
highest court in Pennsylvania. In Commonwealth v. Hallo- 
way, 2 S. & P., 305 (1816), Mary, a negro slave of James 
Course of Maryland, absconded from her master and came 
to Philadelphia, where, after she had resided for about two 
years, her child Eliza was born. It was held that under the 
Act of March 1, 1780, which Pennsylvania passed " for the 
gradual abolition of slavery," this child, born as she was, 
was entitled to freedom ; that the provision of the Federal 
Constitution for the return of a slave from one state " escap- 
ing into another," did not apply to the free-born child of a 
fugitive, and that even under the Constitution of the United 
States the child Eliza was born free. Justice Gibson filed 
a concurring opinion, at the conclusion of which he said: 
"Whether this case is to be considered a hard one or not 
will depend much upon the temper with which the mind 
may contemplate the positive and artificial rights of the 
master over the mother, on the one hand, or on the other the 
natural rights of her child." 

After the Act of 1826 the border troubles, especially be- 
tween York and Lancaster Counties, Pennsylvania, and 
Cecil, Harford and Baltimore Counties, Maryland, were 
much intensified. Mason and Dixon line was the imaginary 
demarcation between two wholly antagonistic social and po- 



8 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



litical orders. The same person might be a Maryland slave 
under Maryland law and a Pennsylvania freeman under 
Pennsylvania law. Owners and agents, armed with Mary- 
land authority to reclaim property, made theirs by Maryland 
law, were felonious kidnappers in Pennsylvania. The anoma- 
lous condition of affairs and the legal difficulties arising 
out of it are best illustrated by actual facts. A slave woman 
escaped from her owner, James S. Mitchell, of Cecil County, 
Maryland, in 1845. During her absence, as a fugitive from 
his service, she had given birth in K^ew Jersey to an illegiti- 
mate child. Through the instrumentality of agents, residing 
in Pennsylvania, Mitchell apprehended the woman, who 
together with the child, had been delivered to him at 
Elkton, in Cecil County. The woman was taken in Penn- 
sylvania by George F. Alberti and James Frisby. These 
agents, themselves fearing to incur possible responsibilities, 
had repeatedly refused to take the child with the mother; 
until finally overcome by the entreaties of the mother her- 
self, they yielded to their feelings of benevolence, and as- 
sumed the risk. They were arrested for kidnapping; evi- 
dence to show their motives in including the child in the 
return was excluded, and they were sentenced to long terms 
in the penitentiary — for permitting it to accompany the 
mother, whose own recapture and return by them were ad- 
mittedly lawful. The state of the record of the case was such 
that it could not be appealed to the United States Supreme 
Court. Mitchell himself, who had not even been in Pennsyl- 
vania, was indicted here for kidnapping the child and was 
subject to seven years in the penitentiary. The Governor of 
Pennsylvania issued, and the Governor of Maryland declined 
to honor, a requisition for him. There were many other 
cases of which this was a type. 

On the other hand, there were unquestionably well-authen- 
ticated cases of slaves returned in violation of their legal 
claims and of free negroes brutally kidnapped and remorse- 



I C<^" 



THE LAW OF THE LAND. J7 

lessly sold to slavery without a fair hearing and adjudication 
of their rights. The offenders were often protected hy legal 
technicalities, obstructions or difficulties, and by friendly 
jurisdictions North or South. 

A case pregnant with great legal and political conse- 
quences finally arose under the conflicting claims of Mary- 
land and Harford County on one side and Pennsylvania and 
York County on the other. It reached the Supreme Court 
of the United States and the contest was a momentous battle 
in the campaign of pro- and anti-slavery agitation. Lawyers 
will find it fully reported in 16 Peters, U. S., 539 (1842) : 

Edward Prigg, a citizen of Harford County, Maryland, 
together with Nathan S. Bemis, Jacob Forward and Stephen 
Lewis, Jr., were indicted in York County, Pennsylvania, 
O. and T., for kidnapping an alleged free child of Margaret 
Morgan, in violation of the Pennsylvania law of 1826, which 
made it a felony, punishable with from seven to twenty- 
one years imprisonment at hard labor, to carry off, sell or 
detain a free negro from Pennsylvania. Prigg was the 
agent — and the others his assistants — of Margaret Ash- 
more, owner of Margaret Morgan, who escaped from her 
and fled to Pennsylvania in 1832. Her children, taken back 
to Maryland by Prigg, were born in Pennsylvania — one of 
them more than a year after she escaped. Under Pennsyl- 
vania law they were free; under Maryland law and the 
common law principle that "the brood follows the dam" 
they were slaves.* To avert the disastrous results that 
always follow a conflict of laws between neighbors, Pennsyl- 
vania and Maryland agreed that the facts should be the 
subject of a special verdict, so that after Prigg's conviction 
and sentence his case might be heard and the issue it in- 
volved be determined by the highest Federal Court of final 
jurisdiction and of last resort. 

* The rule of the civil law iiartus sequitur ventrem, formerly pre- 
vailed in re domestic slavery. — 1 Dall. 167. 



10 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

The United States Supreme Court held that the Federal 
Constitution self -executed its provisions ; that the. owner of 
a fugitive slave could retake him wherever found; and that 
the ISTational government — not the State governments — 
must support and enforce this right ; that the Fugitive Slave 
Law of 1793 recognized this and left nothing on the subject 
to State regulation. But the Court doubted whether State 
magistrates or officials were bound to perform any duty im- 
posed upon them in this respect by a Federal law; and the 
State statute under which Prigg was indicted was held to 
be unconstitutional and void. 

In the discussion Meredith and Hambley appeared for 
Prigg, and virtually for Maryland. For the Commonwealth 
of Pennsylvania appeared Attorney General Ovid F. John- 
son (under Governor D. R. Porter) ; and he frankly stated 
that the real and substantial parties to the controversy were 
Maryland and Pennsylvania, whose officials came into that 
high Court "to terminate disputes and contentions which 
were arising and had for years arisen along the border line 
between them on this subject of the escape and delivering 
up of fugitive slaves. ISTeither party sought the defeat or 
the humiliation of the other. It was for the triumph of 
the law they presented themselves before the Court. They 
were engaged under an imperative sense of duty in the 
work of peace; and he hoped he would be pardoned if he 
added of patriotism also." 

Story, of Massachusetts, delivered the Court's opinion. He 
had been appointed by Madison, served a long time on the 
bench and was a jurist of high renown; but Taney, C. J., 
while concurring in the judgment, expressly dissented from 
the doctrine that the State authorities were " prohibited from 
interfering for the purpose of protecting the rights of the 
master and aiding him in the recovery of his property." He 
thought the contrary to be not only the right, but the duty 
of the State. The Federal Constitution meant this when 



THE LAW OF THE LAND. 11 

it declared " the fugitive shall be given up." He predicted 
that if the State officials under the State laws could not 
arrest the fugitive, " the territory of the State must soon be- 
come an open pathway for the fugitives escaping from other 
States." Justices Baldwin and Thompson concurred with 
Taney; Wayne with Story, and also Daniel, filing opinions. 
McLean held that Congress might prescribe the duty of 
State oSicers. All seven Justices expressed separate opin- 
ions. 

Taney's forecast was right. Maryland and Pennsylvania 
— especially the southeastern counties of this State — soon 
became an open pathway for the fugitive slaves. Their 
track was lighted from many a window in the households 
of the Chester Valley; and two main lines of the Under- 
ground Railroad ran through Lancaster County, close to 
where the two lines of the great steam railway which tra- 
verses it from east to west are now located. 

Acquiescing in this decision Pennsylvania, in 1847, re- 
pealed the provisions of the Act of 1826 repugTiant to the 
Federal Constitution; and remanded the whole subject to 
Congress. Like legislation in other States left the slave- 
holders stripped of the remedies they claimed under the 
Constitution. Hence the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, with 
its more drastic processes, manifold deputies marshal, " posse 
comitatus" of the bystanders, penalties for obstruction of 
processes and many other provisions — which if they had 
been tolerable under the conditions prevailing long after 
1793, had now become odious to the largely increased and 
rapidly increasing number of persons who were opposed to 
all forms of slavery, regardless of its constitutional protec- 
tion or right at law. 

For this class Lancaster County's then representative in 
Congress, Thaddeus Stevens, was the boldest and most aggres- 
sive spokesman. When, in 1851, he denounced every form 
of human slavery he was so far in advance of his party (Whig 



12 THE CHEISTIAlSrA EIOT. 

then and Republican ten years later) that in 1861 a Repub- 
lican Congress, Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, the 
first Free Soil Candidate for Vice President, heading the 
" Ayes," by an overwhelming vote declared that all attempts 
of the States to override or obstruct the Fugitive Slave Law 
were unconstitutional and " dangerous to the peace of the 
Union " ; that all enactments to that end should be repealed 
and there was no authority outside of a State wherein then 
existed a right " to interfere with slaves or slavery in such 
States, in disregard of the rights of their owners or the peace 
of society." 




AN OLD SOUTHERN COOK. 
SLAVE AND SERVANT IN THE GORSUCH FAMILY. MORE THAN 100 YEARS OLD. 



CHAPTEE III. 

Conditions Along the Border. 

On the Different Sides of Mason and Dixon Line — Conflicts of Ideas 
and of Citizenship — Lower Lancaster County a Gateway — Terror 
of the ' ' Gap Gang ' ' — The Underground Eailway — Outrages by 
the Slave Catchers and Kidnappers. 

Formal legislation and statutory enactments could not 
repress the instincts of humanity. Involuntary bondage of 
men, women and children was not consistent with either the 
spirit of free institutions or the instincts of a progressive 
citizenship. As it was impossible to prevent reckless and 
degenerate men from abusing the processes of the law by 
kidnapping and other forms of crime against the colored 
race; and as it was impossible for the most humane and 
philanthropic elements of slaveholding citizenship to pre- 
vent constantly recurring barbarities and horrors resulting 
logically from the legal recognition of property and traffic 
in human flesh and blood, so it was impossible to forbid 
thousands of good men and women throughout the ]^orth — 
in all other respects law-abiding people — to secretly aid 
and even to publicly promote the escape of slaves fleeing 
from slavery. 'Nov could those who thus kept their con- 
science while they broke the law discriminate between the 
worthy and the unworthy in slave or master. There was no 
time in the quick trips between the stations of the Under- 
ground Railway to ascertain with precision whether the 
passenger was fleeing from just or unjust treatment, whether 
he had the character of a criminal escaping deserved punish- 
ment, or of a bondman aspiring to a condition of freedom; 
nor to judge and determine the individual merits and the 
legal rights of the owner. Behind lay Slavery — beyond 
blazed the North Star of Freedom. 

13 



14 THE CHKISTIANA EIOT. 

Lower Lancaster County was at the gateway of this path. 
For a comparatively short distance — only about five miles 
— the Mason and Dixon line forms its Southern boundary. 
Only two of its townships are in contact with Maryland, Ful- 
ton and Little Britain, and the last named barely touched 
the edge of the Southland of Slavery. In its citizenship 
Lancaster County represented all the principal elements 
which enter into our composite commonwealth. The more 
numerous and important strain of blood, occupying the wider 
and richer upper domain, was composed very largely of the 
so-called Pennsylvania German sect and church people, who 
had little fellowship with the negro race, little interest in or 
sympathy with its cause and very slight personal contact 
with its members. In the lower townships the principal 
elements were the so-called Scotch-Irish Presbyterian and the 
Friends ; between them there was considerable friction, if 
not antagonism; they had for nearly a century represented 
different views of society and government. Their variance 
was very distinct in their respective early attitudes toward 
" the Indian question." 

It has been made the subject of forcible contrast that the 
prevailing Quaker settlement of Fulton and Western Diti- 
more townships took on the more placid aspect of the Cono- 
wingo, whose smooth meadows and flowery banks character- 
ized these localities ; while the eastern end of Drumore, Cole- 
rain and Little Britain had peculiarly the type illustrated by 
the more turbulent flow and rugged hillsides of the Octoraro. 
Both streams find their outlet in the Susquehanna, and at 
very nearly the same sea level. But in the days of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law and of local defiance of it the iJ^orth bound 
bondsman generally made his way to the Chester Valley 
by Pleasant Grove and Liberty Square, rather than by Kirk- 
wood and ISTine Points. 

Of the two " schools " the Hicksite branch of Friends 
was not only the more numerous in the Lower End, but its 



CONDITIONS ALONG THE BOEDER. 15 

members were the more aggressive in their hostility to 
slavery. The Presbyterian works out his humanitarianism 
rather more directly through the law than around or under 
it ; and, while in many households of this faith, colored ser- 
vants and fann hands found trusted and long continued 
employment, the general attitude of the Scotch-Irish to the 
slavery question was different from that of the Quaker; 
socially the blood of the negro was more offensive to the more 
aggressive race- 
There were, of course, far more than enough exceptions to 
" prove the rule." Kev. Lindley C. Rutter, long the beloved 
pastor of Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church, was one of 
the most fearless and outspoken of the local Abolitionists. 
Likewise " Father " William Easton, of the Octoraro United 
Presbyterian Church. In the neighborhood of Quarryville, 
where the German and Scotch Irish elements seemed to 
meet, intermixture of colored and white blood was not in- 
frequent ; and, contrary to the general laws of miscegenation 
and degeneration, many of the mulatto, quadroon and octo- 
roon people sprung from these racial intermarriages were 
very respectable, honest and industrious citizens. 

On the north side of the Mine Ridge, that range running 
westward from Gap across Lancaster County, during the 
"fifties" there was a considerable amount of outlawry on 
the part of an organized "gang," whose depredations now 
took on the form of kidnapping and again the less illegal, 
but by no means more popular, practice of aiding the recap- 
ture and return — regularly or irregularly — of fugitive 
slaves. If their raids and robberies were the terror of the 
farmers, millers, butchers and storekeepers of the peaceful 
Pequea Valley, on the south side of which their strongholds 
then lay, their incursions into the homes and haunts of 
colored laborers beyond the Octoraro hills were no less cause 
for alarm among the free or fugitive colored people than 
they were of intense resentment and indignation on the part 



16 THE CHKISTIANA RIOT. 

of the white friends, employers and protectors of the blacks. 

While then one trail of the Underground Railroad ran by 
Columbia and Bird-in-Hand, whereon friendly hands passed 
the fugitive from Stephen Smith to Daniel Gibbons; and a 
branch led from Joseph Taylor's, at Ashville to Pennington- 
ville and Christiana, another had a continuous line of sta- 
tions from the Gilberts and Bushongs around May, in Bart, 
or later Eden township, out "the valley" to and past the 
scene of what was to be the deepest tragedy which ever 
thrilled this little community. 

Popular feeling was not wholly unprepared for it. The 
conflagration was not a sudden outbreak. Combustibles had 
been accumulating. Local incidents, such as escapes, man 
hunts, kidnappings and other like events had occurred to an 
extent sufficient to excite popular interest; and by rumor 
they had been exaggerated enough to further inflame it; 
numerous persons supposed or known to be ex-slaves resided 
and worked in the neighborhood and were the subjects of a 
qualified popular protection. There had been outrages on 
one side and some reprisals on the other. 

In 1850 it was alleged that an innocent and free colored 
hired man named Henry Williams had been seized without 
right or legal process and sold into perpetual slavery South. 
William Dorsey had been taken from his wife and three 
children and lodged in the jail at Lancaster. A gang of 
three, who tried to take a maid servant from Moses Whit- 
son's across the line in Chester County, were forcibly re- 
sisted by a lot of colored men under the lead of Ben. Whipper. 
The girl was rescued and her captors terribly, if not fatally, 
beaten on the Gap hill. A negro known as " Tom-up-in-the- 
barn," living near Gap, w^as said to have been captured 
one morning on his way to thresh at Caleb Brinton's, and 
never got back. The barn of Lindley Coates, in Sadsbury 
township, was burned in 1850 by miscreants angered at his 
denunciation of slave catchers and kidnappers. 




^v.^l^ 







'•US 



CONDITIONS ALONG THE BOKDEE. 17 

It was also related that an industrious negro fence-maker 
bad been violently carried off from bis home on Jobn Mc- 
Gowen's place in the valley, near Mars Hill, between Cbris- 
tiana and Quarryville. Tbe narrator of tbis (Forbes' " True 
Story") does not toll wbetber tbe man was free or a fugitive 
slave; and to bis outraged neigbbors tbis distinction made 
little difference. 

Tbe incident of most note occurring in tbe immediate 
neigbborbood, tbe influence of wbicb lasted longest, tbe feel- 
ing about wbicb was most acute, and wbicb figured largely 
in tbe " Treason Trials" was wbat was stigmatized as " the 
outrage at Cbamberlain's," Its scene was on tbe" Buck hill," 
in tbe northwestern part of Sadsbury township, on what is 
now known as the " Todd place," west of tbe back road from 
Gap to Christiana and in wbat was a sort of middle ground 
between the operations of the "Gap gang" and the refuge 
territory of the fugitives. Here in March 1851 a posse, 
claimed to be led by a rather notorious member of the " Gap 
gang," entered the Chamberlain bouse, severely beat a col- 
ored man named John Williams employed there, who made 
desperate resistance, terrified the members of the family, 
and carried off their bleeding victim in a wagon. It seems 
he was an escaped slave ; but his captors exhibited no offi- 
cial warrant of arrest nor made any claim of authority 
except to declare they were acting for his master. It was 
believed be died from their ill treatment of him. 

And there were reprisals ! William Parker — of whom 
this narrative will have more to say — admitted years 
afterwards that be bad helped to beat, fatally he believed, 
tbe captors of a colored girl; that he bad tried to kill Allen 
Williams on suspicion that he had betrayed Henry; that 
he recaptured a kidnapped man on tbe West Chester road, 
after shooting at bis captors and being himself shot in the 
ankle; and that he and bis associates went to tbe home of 
a decoy negro, burned it down and watched to shoot him 
2 



18 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

with smooth-bore rifles " heavily charged " if the flames drove 
him into the open. 

The leading people of this neighborhood were not only 
anti-slavery in sentiment, but they resented what seemed to 
be lawless invasion of their peaceful community; they were 
not afforded means of verifying the authenticity of the claims 
made for escaped slaves; the local people engaged in the 
business of aiding in slave hunting and slave nabbing were 
generally disreputable and sometimes themselves outlaws 
and criminals; farmers and mechanics were disturbed in 
their domestic service by the frequency with which attacks 
were made upon their many and useful colored employees 
and by the apprehensions to which they were all constantly 
exposed. Withal a sense of protection was felt in the fact 
that the most powerful leader of the bar of Lancaster County, 
and its representative in Congress Thaddeus Stevens, was 
outspoken in his denunciation of the Fugitive Slave Law. 
Political discussion and sentiment in this immediate locality, 
far more than in any other part of Lancaster County, was 
focusing upon open defiance of and even physical resistance 
to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. As early as 
October 11, 1850, at a public meeting in Georgetown, Bart 
Township, four miles from the later scene of the riot — 
William L. Rakestraw presiding and Elwood Cooper Sec- 
retary — a committee consisting of Thomas Whitson, Elwood 
Cooper, Cyrus Manahan, Elwood Griest and Joseph Mc- 
Clelland, reported and published vigorous resolutions de- 
nouncing the fugitive slave bill, and declaring that they 
would "harbor, clothe, feed and aid the escape of fugitive 
slaves in opposition to the law." 

This was the state of popular feeling and these were the 
social and political conditions prevailing in lower Lancaster 
County, when the Gorsuch party set out from Maryland to 
retake their escaped slaves by due and orderly processes of 
law — from which mission the elder Gorsuch returned a 



CONDITIONS ALONG THE BOEDER. 19 

mangled corpse and his son with a shot-riddled body ; in the 
attempt to execute which the officers of the law were put to 
flight; out of which grew the arrest of two score men and 
the indictment of more persons for treason than were ever 
before or since tried for that crime in the United States ; 
the acrimonious relations of two neighboring common- 
wealths for years; the open exultation of many persons over 
the killing and wounding of citizens engaged in a lawful 
undertaking, and the chagrin of many other orderly and law- 
abiding people that the law of the land had been violated 
in bloodshed and its officers successfully resisted. 



CHAPTEK IV. 

The Escape and Pursuit of the Slaves. 

The Gorsuch Homestead and Its Proprietor — An Old and Prominent 
Maryland Family — The Eunaways Absent for Nearly Two Years 
Before They were Pursued — The Warrants and Attempted Exe- 
cution. 

In Baltimore Countj, Maryland, on the west side of the 
York and Baltimore turnpike, south of Monkton, and north 
of Glencoe, stations of the Xorth Central Railroad, stand 
today the farm buildings of the Gorsuch homestead, where 
and as thej stood in 1849 and for a long time before. 
Their earlier owner, John Gorsuch, devised this estate to 
his nephew, Edward, with several hundred acres of land 
and a number of slaves. It was a provision of his will that 
certain of them should be free when they reached a fixed 
age. In 1849 one of them at least attained this condition. 
Jarret Wallace had during the period of his bondage so 
served his master and was so appreciated by him that after 
he became free Mr. Gorsuch retained him in his employ as 
his "market man" to sell his products in Baltimore. In 
ISTovember, 1849, he was building Wallace a tenant house, 
and John Wesley Knight (who now lives in York, aged 83) 
and Joshua Pitt, carpenters, were working for him at the 
time. He had also millwrights, boarding and sleeping there 
and then they were building him a saw mill on Piney Creek, 
which ran through his extensive farm. Four of his slaves 
were N^oah Buley and Joshua Hammond — whose time was 
nearly up — and two younger, about twenty-one years old, 
named ISTelson Ford and George Hammond who had six or 
seven years to serve. The man Ford was a rather delicate 
young fellow, and Mr. Gorsuch spared him heavy work. 

20 



THE ESCAPE AND PURSUIT OF HIE SLAVES. 21 

He was the teamster of the place, but was always accom- 
panied by help when he needed it. Buley is described as a 
copper colored mulatto and of treacherous disposition. 

Mr. Gorsuch was a man of much prominence. He was a 
Whig in politics, a class leader in the Methodist church, a 
dignified and courtly gentleman in his manners, a just and 
accurate man in his business dealings, a kind hearted master 
and employer and a man of forceful and determined tempera- 
ment. He was born April 17, 1795, and was, therefore, 
in his fifty-fifth year when his slaves escaped and in his 
fifty-seventh when he was killed. He was living with his 
second wife, and had five children of his first wife, two 
daughters and three sons, of whom the eldest, John S., was a 
Methodist clergyman, then residing in Washington, D. C. 
There is no portrait extant of the elder Gorsuch, but his son 
Dickinson resembled him. 

In the fall of 1849 Mr. Gorsuch had his wheat stored in 
the corn house, a building which stood between the house 
and barn. The main barn fronts and adjoins the turnpike ; 
the mansion house is some distance back of the road, reached 
by a shady lane and surrounded by lawn, orchards and out- 
buildings. In accordance with his habit Mr. Gorsuch kept 
careful account of his wheat in store and of the quantities 
withdrawn from time to time, as he made his grain all into 
flour at his own mill and retailed it in Baltimore. Having 
missed considerable of his stock, he made inquiry of a 
neighbor miller, Elias Matthews, who reported a lot of wheat 
sold to him by one Abe Johnson, a ne'er-do-well free negro 
living two miles north of Gorsuch's, who had no land to 
raise wheat nor credit to buy it. Gorsuch got out a warrant 
for his arrest, and it was put into the hands of Constable 
Bond for execution. He was laggard and "Bill" Foster 
who was something of a local terror to wrong-doers, was 
entrusted with the job. But Johnson got over into Pennsyl- 
vania, and Governor Johnston subsequently refused to honor 
a requisition for his extradition. 



22 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



While the carpenters were building the tenant house and 
the millwrights were putting up the saw mill, in l!^ovember, 
1849, the negroes were cutting and topping the corn, haul- 
ing in the unshucked ears with ox-carts to the barn floor 
where, bj aid of lanterns, the whole household, mechanics 
and slaves engaged nightly in husking bee merriment. Mean- 
time news of Bill Foster's search for Abe Johnson were rife ; 
likewise suspicious that the colored " boys " had helped him 
to raid the cornhouse and shared his spoils. One day they 
exhibited unwonted unrest and clustered into whispering 
groups; one expressed to the white workmen special anxiety 
to know " if the Boss is going to husk corn tonight," and 
another declared his purpose to set a rabbit trap, for it was 
" going to be a very dark night." 

It was. There was no corn husking; and Knight, the car- 
penter, was aroused early by the call of Dickinson Gorsuch 
from down stairs that " the boys are all gone." They escaped 
through a skylight in the back building and made their way 
down a ladder and up the York turnpike. When the Gor- 
suches next saw any of them it was in the flash and fire of 
the Christiana Riot, in the early dawn of September 11, 
1851, at Parker's cabin. 

During the interval, however, reports reached the Gor- 
suches from time to time of their whereabouts; messages 
came from the runaways soliciting food supplies and other 
aid, which were sent upon assurances of their return. Mr. 
Gorsuch had such confidence in his benevolence as their 
master that he always believed if he could meet or communi- 
cate directly with them he could get them back. They soon 
found their way into the vicinity of Christiana where they 
" worked around " and were known by various aliases ; after 
nearly two years sojourn thereabouts their ownership became 
known to those who made gain of such information. 

The personal narrative of Peter Woods, survivor, leaves 
little room for doubt as to their identity and their residence 



THE ESCAPE AND PURSUIT OF THE SLAVES. 23 

around Christiaua. He says : " Thej lived here among us 
adjoining me. One lived with Joseph Pownall. His name 
was John Beard. He was a little brown-skinned fellow — a 
pleasant chap. The other three were known to us as Thomas 
Wilson, Alexander Scott and Edward Thompson; Scott 
was a tall yellow-colored fellow, with straight hair. The 
colored fellows met at Parker's nearly every Sunday. A good 
many got their washing done there. He had an apple-butter 
party about the time of the riot. We knew that these new 
colored fellows were escaped slaves. They were about the 
Riot House and in our neighborhood a couple of years before 
the riot. We colored fellows were all sworn in to keep secret 
what we knew and when these fellows came there they were 
sworn in too. Scott told how they four happened to run 
away. He said he brought them with him in a big wagon 
to Baltimore, or he said he had come with a big load of grain 
for his master. He put them on the cars at Baltimore, then 
sent his master's team back and took the next train too, and 
that way they come up among the Quakers in this country 
which they knew was a good point on the underground rail- 
way. The people who owned these slaves or some of them 
sent men up into this country some time before. One man 
came to me one day while I was cradling wheat and said, 
' You are a little man to cradle wheat, I am trying to find 
three or four big colored men to cut wheat for me. Can you 
tell me if there are any here that I can get ? ' I knew what 
he was after, that he was looking for escaped negroes, and I 
did not give him much satisfaction." The '' John Beard " 
whom Woods knew was Gorsuch's boy N^elson Ford — so he 
told Cyrus Brinton. 

From Penningtonville (now Atglen, near Christiana), 
August 29, 1851, there was mailed to " Mr. Edward Gor- 
such, Hereford P. O., Bait. Co., M. D.," a letter which was 
found upon and taken from his body after he was killed ; the 
following is a copy: 



24 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

Lancaster, Co. 28 August 1851. 
Eespected friend, I have the required 
Information of four men that is within 
Two miles of each other, now the best 
Way is for you to come as A hunter 

Disguised about two days ahead of your son and let him come 
By way of Philadelphia and get the deputy marshal John 
Nagle I think is his name, tell him the situation 
And he can get force of the right kind it will take 
About twelve so that they can divide and take them 
All within half an hour, now if you can come on the 2d or 3d 

of September come on iS; I will 
Meet you at the gap when you get their 
Inquire for Benjamin Clay's tavern let 
Your son and the marshal get out 
Kinyer's* hotel now if you cannot come 
At the time spoken of write very soon 
And let me know when you can 
I wish you to come as soon as you possibly can 

Very respectfully thy friend 

William M. P. 
(In pencil) Wm M Padgett. 
* Kinzey 's. 

About the same time there had come into Gorsuch's locality 
a man (whose name is not known), purporting to be from 
lower Lancaster County, who claimed to be able to locate 
a number of slaves escaped from Baltimore County, among 
them one of Dr. Pearce, who had escaped the same night as 
Gorsuch's. Dr. Pearce was a son of the elder Gorsuch's mar- 
ried sister Belinda. 

Acting upon these reports and under the authority of the 
new Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Edward Gorsuch, his son, 
Dickinson, his nephew, Dr. Thomas Pearce, JSTicholas Hutch- 
ings and Nathan ISTelson, neighbors and friends, came to 
Pennsylvania to recover the slaves. Under date of Septem- 
ber 9, 1851, the owner procured from Edward D. Ingraham, 
United States Commissioner at Philadelphia, four warrants 
directed to Henry H. Kline, Deputy United States Marshal, 
to apprehend the fugitives. About the attempt and failure 



THE ESCAPE AND PURSUIT OF THE SLAVES. 25 

to execute those warrants, or any of them, circle the Chris- 
tiana Riot and the Treason Trials of 1851. 

According to Dickinson Gorsuch's diary his father left 
for Philadelphia " on the express train," Monday, Septem- 
ber 8, 1851, and the others followed next day. The war- 
rants had meantime issued and the Maryland party met at 
Parkesburg on Wednesday, September 10. By arrangement 
Constables John Agan and "Sheriff's OfBcer" Thompson 
Tully of Philadelphia had come on to Parkesburg; Deputy 
Marshal Kline went separately by rail to West Chester, took 
a vehicle to Gallagherville, and started thence for Penning- 
tonville [now Atglen]. His wagon broke down; he and his 
man Gallagher hired another vehicle and reached Pennington- 
villc about midnight ; his delay caused the party to discon- 
nect. Agan and Tully and the Gorsuches stayed at Parkes- 
burg. Meantime a light young colored man, named Samuel 
Williams, of Seventh Street, below Lombard, Philadelphia, 
recognized Kline at Penningtonville ; he likely scented his 
real errand, and when Kline represented that he was after 
two horse thieves, Williams told him they had left. When 
Kline started for Gap he was followed by some one whom he 
suspected to be Williams, and Williams no doubt sounded 
a general alarm as to Kline's errand. He had been dis- 
patched for that purpose from Philadelphia, where a Vigilant 
Committee was on the lookout to protect fugitives. It was 
also told by John Criley on information from Henry Murr, 
blacksmith, that Joseph Scarlet, from a business trip to 
Philadelphia early in the week, had brought like tidings 
into the neighborhood. 

Kline and his associate slept at Houston's hotel, Gap, on 
Wednesday night and returned early next morning to Parkes- 
burg, where they found Agan and Tully ; the Gorsuch people 
had gone over to Sadsbury on the old Philadelphia turn- 
pike and Kline rejoined them: Gorsuch went to Parkes- 
burg to detain the Philadelphia officers, and Kline went to 



26 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

Downingtown and thence to Gallagherville, where the entire 
searching party met, except Tiilly and Agan, who returned 
finally to Philadelphia. About eleven o'clock at night the 
party went from Gallagherville to Downingtown, took the 
cars there after midnight, came through to Gap, where they 
got off the train and went do\vn the railroad track. About 
2 A.M. they met Padgett (his name was not mentioned at 
the trial). Presumably they joined him and left the rail- 
road at the grade crossing of a public road to Smyrna, 
formerly kno^vn as the " Brown House," which stood at the 
northeast corner of the intersection. Padgett was a farm 
hand at Murray's, the stone house at the top of the hill, 
between Gap and Christiana on the Brown farm. The Mur- 
rays had lived in Baltimore County, Md. There their local 
guide led them, likely by or at least toward Smyrna and 
through cornfields to the Valley Road, where the " long lane " 
led southward through Levi Pownall's farm to the ISToble 
Eoad, across the Valley and near to Pownall's tenant house 
on the southern slope, where William Parker and his brother- 
in-law Pinckney lived. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Defense and Defenders. 

William Parker and His Home — A Leader of His Eace and Class — 
The Hero of the Fugitive Slaves and the Champion of Their Eesist- 
anee to Recapture — The Night Before the Fight. 

To those who sympathized with resistance to the execu- 
tion of the warrants, and rejoiced in the results of the battle 
to the death made by the refugees, the hero of the event 
was William Parker. His home was "where the battle 
was fought," and he was then and had been long before a 
leader of his race and the most resolute defender of the 
runaway slaves in that section. He was a man of force and 
had strong though untutored intellectual qualities. After 
the war for the Union, in which he served, he inspired some 
articles for the Atlantic Monthly, in 1866, from which this 
story will later be amplified, and upon the occasion of a re- 
visit nearly forty years ago to Christiana he gave some 
account of himself to old friends thereabouts. 

He was born opposite Queen Anne, in Anne Arundel 
County, Maryland. His mother was Louisa Simms, who died 
when he was young, and his only parental care was from his 
grandmother. His mother was one of the seventy field hands 
of Major William Brogdon, of "Rodown" plantation; and 
six years after the old master died, when his sons David 
and William divided his plantation and slaves, William 
Parker fell to David and to his estate " Nearo." There he 
had kind treatment, until slave traders came and a slave 
sale occurred, followed by others with their cruel and 
pathetic separation of families. Then he realized the bitter- 
ness of slavery and the blessings of freedom. He set out for 
the jSTorth by Baltimore, with his brother as a companion. 

27 



28 THE CHEISTIAJSTA KIOT. 

They reached York and Wrightsville, crossed the river to 
Columbia in a boat and he settled down to farm work near 
Lancaster at $3 per month; while his brother moved on to 
the eastern part of the County. Later William got employ- 
ment with Dr. Obadiah Dingee, a warm sympathizer, who 
lived near Georgetown and was the father of the venerable 
Charles Dingee, of West Grove nursery and rose culture 
fame. While there Parker had access to anti-slavery periodi- 
cals and he heard William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick 
Douglass speak ; he caught inspiration from them to organize 
his fellows, fugitive and free, in that community to resist 
recapture and repel assaults upon their race. 

It has been already told, upon his own testimony, how they 
operated. Parker was involved in many other affrays. In 
a rescue riot on the streets of Lancaster on one occasion he 
proved himself a man of great strength and valor; he was 
recognized by whites and blacks as a towering figure. Daniel 
Gibbons sent Eliza Ann Howard, another refugee, to Dr. 
Dingee's and she became Parker's wife ; her sister followed 
and married his associate Alex. Pinckney. They all lived 
together, and at the time the Gorsuch party came for their 
slaves Parker and Pinckney were running a horse-power 
threshing machine for Joseph Scarlet and George Whitson. 
Their families lived together in the tenant house, just to 
the east of the " long lane " on the Levi Pownall farm, later 
ovraed by Marion Griest, and now by Mrs. Agnes Lantz. It 
was a place for frequent foregatherings of the colored people 
in that day. ^o trace of the little old stone house is left, 
but sketches of it were made before the obliteration. The 
news spread by Sam Williams of Kline's visit reached Par- 
ker's house the evening before the officers. Besides Pinckney, 
Josh Kite, Samuel Thompson and Abraham Johnson were 
there. Sam Hopkins, who died recently, always related that 
there was an apple-butter boiling at Parker's that night, and 
the merrymakers danced around the kettle and fire singing 
a song the refrain of which was 



THE DEFENSE AND DEFENDERS. 29 

"Take me back to Canada, 
Where de' cullud people's free." 

The men named and the Parker and Pincknej sisters were 
there all night at least. That the negroes were armed not 
only appears from subsequent events, but it might be in- 
ferred from Parker's own account of his habit. He was 
long reticent as to the details of the final encounter; but 
there is ample proof that of the Gorsuch slaves ISToah Buley 
was there very early on the day of the affray, and at least 
two others of the Gorsuch slaves were on the ground soon 
after. The names taken by fugitives were so uncertain 
that the " Abraham Johnson " of this occasion may or may 
not have been the Baltimore County freeman of that name 
who fled from Gorsuch's warrant in 1849. Some of the 
Gorsuch party so identified him. It is beyond doubt that the 
concourse of colored men already gathered at Parker's house 
when the Kline-Gorsuch squad arrived were assembled by 
design, upon some call or signal ; that their leaders knew the 
objective point was the arrest then and there of the Balti- 
more County runaways ; and they soon had added force large 
enough and brave enough to resist, defeat and either kill, 
wound or drive off the officers and owners. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Fight. 

The Challenge to Surrender and the Defiance — A Long Parley — The 
Prompt Eesponse to a Call for Aid — The Firing Begins — Flight of 
Kline and his Deputies — Gorsueh is Killed and his Son Terribly 
Wounded. 

Padgett, guide and informer, led the Southern and Federal 
forces to within about a quarter mile of the Parker house, 
where they stopped at a little stream crossing the long lane, 
ate some crackers and cheese and " fixed their ammunition." 
It was then just about daybreak; it was a heavy, foggy 
morning; and Padgett found it was his time to withdraw. 
As the party drew near to the short lane which led into the 
house and little garden-orchard around it they were seen by 
I^elson Ford and Joshua Hammond, two of the Gorsueh slaves 
who had evidently been picketed. They retreated to the 
house ; Gorsueh and Kline followed and the Marshal officially 
announced their errand. Some inmate of the house answered 
that the men called for were not there ; and when Kline, as 
he testified, went to go up the stairs, followed by the elder 
Gorsueh, a five-pronged fish "gig" was thrown at him; next 
came a flying axe. J^either missile hit him; he and Mr. 
Gorsueh withdrew, and he says a shot was fired at them from 
the house and he returned the fire. Then Kline made a feint 
of sending oif for a hundred men " to scare the negroes." 
His bluff had that temporary effect and a parley ensued. 
During this it was made manifest that a considerable number 
of armed men were in Parker's house. 

Meantime, on their way, the officers had heard a bugle 
blown; conjectures differed whether it was a signal from the 
Parker house or a summons for the laborers on the railroad 

30 



THE FIGHT. 31 

to go to work. The evidence on this point was not positive, 
but the besieged soon sounded their horn from the upper 
story. Parker is quoted as saying that Kline threatened to 
burn the house, and he defied him to do it; that Mrs. Par- 
ker sounded a horti which brought their allies ; and the depu- 
ties fired at her as she sounded it, without causing her to 
desist; that Pinckney counselled surrender, but Parker was 
for fight. Parker's own accounts show no lack of self-asser- 
tion nor absence of self-confidence. That may or may not 
enhance their credibility. 

Some early summons called a mixed mob together, for 
while the brief events already described were occurring, 
Castner Hanway, who lived a full mile away, rode up on a 
bald-faced sorrel horse; Elijah Lewis came on foot in his 
shirt sleeves and a straw hat ; Zeke Thompson, the Indian 
negro, arrived with a scythe in one hand and a revolver in 
the other ; !Noah Buley rode in on a handsome gray horse and 
carrying a gun ; Harvey Scott was there, weaponless ; and a 
half score of others armed with guns, scythes and clubs, were 
assembled — far more than the upstairs of that little cabin 
could have held, even without the women. Other white 
men came trooping along, who in Parker's imagination were 
Gap gangsters enrolled by Kline as " special constables " ; 
but there is no satisfactory proof that these were anybody 
but residents of the vicinage attracted to the place by the 
commotion. 

The excitement and confusion that subsequently ensued, 
the quick succession of tragic events, the prompt retreat of 
the officers and the almost immediate flight from the vicinity 
of their giiiltiest assailants, and the fact that none of them 
remained or ever returned to tell the whole story, combine to 
make it difficult even now to aver with certainty what next 
actually happened. It is, however, reasonably sure that 
Hanway and Lewis were called upon to interfere and aid in 
executing the warrants and they declined to do so; but they 



32 



THE CHKISTIAlSrA EIOT. 



neither advised nor inspired any violence ; nor does it appear 
that thev arrived on the scene by any pre-arrangement or 
otherwise than from hearing that an attempt was being 
made by some one to take negroes from the Parker house. 

Parker says Dickinson Gorsuch opened the next stage of 
the battle by firing at him in resentment of a supposed insult 
to his father, and that he knocked the pistol out of Young 
Gorsuch's hand before " fighting commenced in earnest," and 
the outside negroes then shot both Gorsuches. Deputy Kline, 
who made himself somewhat ridiculous on the witness stand, 
remembered most vividly how he himself went "over the 
fence and out " through the cornfield and did not very clearly 
account for the fatal renewal of hostilities. Joshua Gorsuch 
testified that as Edward Gorsuch started to the house in 
answer to Kline's call to him to come on and get his prop- 
erty, his uncle was murderously assaulted with clubs and he 
fired a revolver to save his kinsman, but his cap burst and 
the weapon did not go off ; he was severely beaten and ran for 
his life, the infuriated crowd pursuing him ; a thick felt hat 
saved his life and he rode off from the battlefield behind some 
one on a horse, supposing Edward and Dickinson Gorsuch 
were already killed; his retreat ended only at York; but it 
was months before he recovered from his wounds. 

Whoever else ran or stayed, the Gorsuches, father and son, 
stood their ground and took the enemy's fire. Dickinson 
warned the elder that they would be overpowered ; but when 
the parent declined to retreat the son stayed by him until he 
was himself clubbed and shot down, as he went to the rescue 
of his assaulted father. Eighty shot penetrated Dickinson's 
arms, thigh and body — and many of them stayed there; so 
that when he died in 1882 — thirty-one years after he was 
shot — his body prepared for burial was " pitted like a 
sponge " with the marks of the " Christiana Riot." When 
he was supposed to be dying Dickinson Gorsuch was taken 
into the shade of a big oak tree, about fifty yards from where 
the small lane then entered the " long lane." 



^.^'^ 



7/ 









x2?;^^^ 










THE FIGHT. 33 

Dr. Pearce was hit with a missile from an upper window ; 
Nathan ISTelson knew and recognized Buley, one of the run- 
aways, and while, at the outset, only fifteen or twenty negroes 
were lined in the lane with guns, scythes, clubs and corn 
cutters, Nelson saw from seventy-five to a hundred before the 
smoke of battle had entirely cleared. Sam Hopkins and his 
historic corn cutter were among the later arrivals. 

One of the dramatic features of the engagement was the 
appearance on the field of old Isaiah Clarkson. He sum- 
moned fifteen or twenty infuriated and raging negroes into 
the cornfield and " called them to order " three times before 
he could quiet them, and withhold them from violence. 
Meantime old Clarkson had seen the body of Edward Gor- 
such lying alone where he fell dead, clubbed, cut and pierced 
with gun shots, his son desperately wounded; his kinsmen 
beaten and driven off; the United States deputies marshal 
in full retreat — infuriated women, forgetful of all humane 
instincts, revenging on a humane Christian gentleman's life- 
less body the wrongs their race had suffered from masters 
of altogether different mould, rushed from the house and 
with corn cutters and scythe blades hacked the bleeding and 
lifeless body as it lay in the garden walk. At the first hear- 
ing Scott, the witness who afterwards swore differently on 
the trial, testified that he lived with John Kerr and had 
stayed at Parker's out of doors in the road all that night, 
having been persuaded to go there by John ]\Iorgan and 
Henry Simms, who were armed; that he saw them both 
shoot and Henry Simms shot Gorsuch ; that John Morgan 
cut him in the head with a corn cutter after he fell. Dr. 
Pearce stated under oath that he saw Noah Buhly running 
past Gorsuch, but he could not say that Buhly did the shoot- 
ing. At the time Edward Gorsuch was shot he was standing 
still calling his nephew Joshua and had no weapon in his 
hand. 

It will never be known whose shot or how many killed 
3 



34 



THE CHKISTIANA RIOT. 



Edward Gorsuch. More than one weapon was directed at 
him and doubtless several were guilty of his blood. It was 
not long until a consciousness of this fell upon the mob and 
they scattered as rapidly as they had assembled. If the 
Federal deputies had dispersed in fear and flight and the 
local authorities were slow to move, neither were the 
guilty laggard in flight. By nightfall every man inmate of 
Parker's house and every runaway from Baltimore County 
were on their way to Canada. Hay mows and straw stacks 
weltered above the throbbing presence of trembling fugitives ; 
and all the local agencies of rapid news and transportation 
which were at command of the anti-slavery people were set 
in motion to get and keep the accused in advance of the war- 
rants. Somebody tarried long enough on the Parker premises 
to despoil Gorsuch's body of $300 or $400 in money, which 
was on his person when he fell and which was missing at the 
coroner's inquest. According to Tamsy Brown it was taken 
from his body by a black man, who divided it among the 
colored women and Abe Johnson. On a blank leaf of the 
Padgett letter, heretofore printed, were found some memo- 
randa made by Mr. Gorsuch himself of the railroad sched- 
ules and names of persons in the neighborhood of the scene 
of the affray, with whom it was supposed colored men resided, 
together with the following: 

Eobert M. Lee 

John Agen Henry H. Cline 

Depatised 

Marshal Kline 

Lawyer Lee 

and Benit 

Commissioner 

In graham 

O. Eiley's Telegraph 

avoid Halzel 

• Councelman 

Cpt. Shutt 

J. E. Henson. 



THE FIGHT. 35 

The significance of these entries will be recognized. No 
weapons were fonnd on the body. This of course does not 
prove that Mr. Gorsuch was unarmed, as he easily might 
have lost or have been despoiled of his arms. Fred Douglass 
boasted that Gorsuch's pistol had been presented to him. His 
family believe, and from his habits of life and temperament 
it may be presumed, the elder Gorsuch was unarmed. He 
depended mainly on the force of the law's warrant and, per- 
haps too confidently, on the nerve of the Federal deputies 
marshal. 

Dickinson Gorsuch was soon removed to friendly shelter 
and tender ministrations under the hospitable roof of Levi 
Pownall's homestead. There he learned to know that the 
Quaker families of the valley, while they were considerate 
of the slave, could be no less kind to the master in distress. 
The daily entries of his diary attest his gratitude and appre- 
ciation, and these he substantially manifested throughout 
his lifetime. His contemporaneous portrait herein pub- 
lished was taken from a daguerreotype sent to the Pownall 
family. Dr. Asher Pusey Patterson, who attended him, was 
then practicing at Smyrna. He was of the Lower End fami- 
lies whose names he bore. Dr. John L. Atlee, Sr., of Lan- 
caster, was called into consultation. 

During Dickinson Gorsuch's stay in the Pownall house- 
hold he was visited in his convalescence by many of his Balti- 
more County friends and relatives. Among them were his 
brother John S. ; his uncle Talbott Gorsuch ; his sister 
Mary (afterwards Mrs. Morrison) ; his cousin George and 
others. It was ten days before he could eat and nearly three 
weeks before he could sit \\p. By October 1 he could take a 
short drive and was entertained next day at Ambrose Pow- 
nall's. When he returned home in charge of some of his 
family on October 4, Dr. Patterson accompanied them as far 
as Columbia. During his recoveiy he had no more popular 
visitor than his friend Alex. Morrison, who subsequently 



36 



THE CHKISTIANA EIOT. 



married his sister. Morrison is described by the older inhabi- 
tants as one who "made friends everywhere." He kept up 
his acquaintance with people about Christiana until his death 
and visited there as late as 1903. He rejoiced in the establish- 
ment of good relations between those who had been on opposite 
sides of the conflict of 1851. Dickinson Gorsuch was 56 years 
old when he died, August 2, 1882. 

Exactly when and how Parker, Pinckney and the fugitive 
slaves got away from the neighborhood is difficult to tell with 
absolute certainty; but a surviving neighbor throws light o- 
their movements immediately after the affray. George 
Steele, now living in Chester County (who subsequently 
married Elizabeth, daughter of Levi W. Pownall), was mak- 
ing charcoal iron at the Sadsbury forges in 1851. He lived 
near by the Parker place and recalls the events with great 
distinctness. He met some negroes coming from the scene 
exultant over its results and he warned them of their serious 
danger. He says Parker first came to Pownall's to arrange 
for Dickinson Gorsuch's removal there, but another neighbor 
was already on the way with the wounded man. Both Parker 
and Pownall remained hidden all day; the news of young 
Gorsuch's serious condition brought many visitors to the 
Pownall house; later in the evening Parker and Pinckney 
themselves called and for the first time seemed to realize their 
position. Some of the women members of the household 
warned them; and, while Mrs. Pownall was nursing the 
wounded man to life, she was sparing of her pantry supplies 
to fill a " pillow case " with food for the fugitives ; and her 
husband, under whose roof Gorsuch was receiving every kind 
attention, loaned of his clothing to their disguise — all being 
carried to them by George Pownall, then a boy, who was 
directed to find them at a certain apple tree on the farther 
side of the orchard. 

At the " Eiot House " the Pownalls found both Pinckney's 
and Parker's loaded guns ; and they prudently burned a lot of 




A SOUTHERN VISITOR. 



COL. ALEXANDER MORRISON, FRIEND AND KINSMAN OF THE GORSUCHES, WHO KEPT UP FRIENDLY 
RELATIONS WITH THE POWNALL FAMILY. 



THE FIGHT. 37 

letters found there, which would have incriminated some of 
their neighbors in violation of the Fugitive Slave Law. 
The Pownalls later received anonymous information that 
Parker had reached Canada. Gorsuch himself is said to hav^e 
expressed kindly feeling for Parker, which bears out the 
theory that Parker tried to stem the riot after it attained a 
deadly stage. 

Even they who were gniiltlcss of their neighboi*'s blood were 
not unmindful of the responsibility imposed upon their com- 
munity by the violent killing of Gorsuch and the escape of 
his slayers. His dead body was taken to Christiana and lay 
at Fred Zercher's hotel, where Harrar's store now is and 
nearly opposite the Commemoration Monument. There a 
coroner's inquest was held before noon. The main facts of 
the riot were related by Kline, " Harvey " Scott (who later 
recanted), and others. John Bodley and Jake Woods testi- 
fied that Elijah Lewis passed them in the early morning, 
when they were working at James Cooper's, and that Lewis 
said " William Parker's house was surrounded by kidnappers 
and it was no time to take out potatoes." 

The coroner's jury, summoned by Joseph D. Pownall, 
Esq., consisted of George Whitson, John Rowland, E. Os- 
borne Dare, Hiram Kinnard, Samuel Miller, Lewis Cooper, 
George Firth, William Knott, John Hillis, William H. 
Millhouse, Joseph Richwine and Miller Knott. Their find- 
ing was : 

" That on the morning of the 11th inst., the neighborhood 
was thro"\vn into an excitement by the above deceased, and 
some five or six persons in company with him, making an 
attack upon a family of colored persons, living in said Town- 
ship, near the Brick Mill, about 4 o'clock in the morning, 
for the purpose of arresting some fugitive slaves as they 
alleged, many of the colored people of the neighborhood col- 
lected, and there was considerable firing of guns and other 
fire-arms by both parties, u^^on the arrival of some of the 



38 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



neighbors at the place, after the riot had subsided, found the 
above deceased, lying upon his back or right side dead. Upon 
a post mortem examination upon the body of the said de- 
ceased, made by Drs. Patterson and Martin, in our presence, 
we believe he came to his death by gun shot wounds that he 
received in the above mentioned riot, caused by some person 
or persons to us unknown." 

Dr. John Martin and Dr. A. P. Patterson reported offi- 
cially that Gorsuch came to his death by a gunshot wound 
made by slug or heavy shot, occupying the upper part of the 
right breast, and that there was an incision found near the 
frontal bone, produced by a light sharp instrument, and a 
fracture of the left humerus by some blunt weapon. 

It must be conceded, even at this distance in time, the 
jury's thermometer of popular indignation at the crime 
scarcely registered above the mark of "cold neutrality." 

Scharf's history of Baltimore County states that on Sep- 
tember 13th and 15th meetings of citizens of Baltimore 
County were held to take action in the premises. Wm. H. 
Freeman, John Wethered, Samuel Worthington, Wm. Mat- 
thews, Wm. Taggart, John B. Pearce, Samuel H. Taggart, 
Wm. Fell Johnson, Wm. H. Hoffman, Edward S. Myers, 
John Merryman, and Henry Carroll were appointed a com- 
mittee to collect all the facts in the case and transmit them to 
Governor Lowe, in order that he might lay them before the 
President of the United States. Another committee, con- 
sisting of John B. Holmes, Levi K. Bowen, Dr. Nicholas 
Hutchins, J. M. McComas, and E. Parsons, was appointed to 
confer with the gentlemen who had accompanied Mr. Gor- 
such into Pennsylvania. A meeting at Slader's tavern, on 
September 15th, passed resolutions calling upon the people 
of each district of the county to elect delegates to meet at 
Cockeysville on October 4th for the purpose of forming a 
county association, and recommending the formation of dis- 
trict associations " for the protection of the people in their 



THE FIGHT. 39 

slave and other property." An indignation meeting of six 
thousand persons was held at Monument Square, Baltimore 
City, on September 15th, at which Hon. John H. T. Jerome 
presided, and addresses were made by Z. Collins Lee, Cole- 
man Yellott, Francis Gallagher, Samuel H. Taggart, and 
Col. George W. Hughes. 



CHAPTER VII. 

The " Pursuit " and Aeeests. 

Federal anfl State Authorities in Conflict — * ' Eough Riding ' ' the 
Valley — Numerous and Indiscriminate Arrests — Hearings in Lan- 
caster and Committals to Philadelphia. 

Whatever anybody was doing in the way of vindicating 
whatever law or laws had been violated, the perpetrators of 
the killing were being allowed to escape. There were no 
daily newspapers in Lancaster then and the Philadelphia 
journals of Friday, September 12th, had very meagre ac- 
counts of the affair. But meantime the Federal officials in 
Philadelphia and the Commonwealth authorities in Lancaster 
County " got busy." Constable William Proudfoot, of Sads- 
bury, acted under the direction of 'Squire Pownall and Dis- 
trict Attorney John L. Thompson. In Philadelphia John 
M. Ashmead was United States Attorney, and Anthony E. 
Roberts was Marshal. When District Attorney Thompson 
made his second visit to the scene on Saturday following the 
riot, accompanied by a " strong party of armed men," he 
found there the United States Marshal, District Attorney and 
Commissioner "with a strong force of U. S. Marines and a 
detachment of the Philadelphia police." A controversy arose 
between the local District Attorney Thompson and the United 
States Attorney Ashmead as to whether the prisoners should 
be held for murder in Lancaster County, or for treason 
against the United States. Commissioner Ingraham sus- 
tained the latter charge. The difficulty was adjusted by an 
agreement that each party should make its own arrests. 
Some forty-five United States Marines who went to Chris- 
tiana were in command of Lieutenants Watson and Jones. 
United States Marshal A. E. Roberts had a civil posse of 

40 




CASTNER HANWAY. 
TRIED FOR TREASON AND ACQUITTEC. 



THE " PUKSUIT " AND ARRESTS. 41 

fifty. There were county constables and deputies sheriff on 
the scene. With these three detachments landed in a little 
country village and scouring the surrounding farms, of whose 
inhabitants half the many blacks had fled the State and the 
other half were in hiding, and the whites mostly suspected of 
sympathy with the fugitives, a local reign of terror ensued; 
"the valley" was in a state worse than subjection to martial 
law. The tendency of a "little brief authority" is toward 
abuse of it; and the class of persons easily secured for the 
ser^ace then required of temporary officers of the law was 
not such as to insure delicacy of treatment or tender con- 
sideration for the objects against whom their summary proc- 
esses were directed. Whites and blacks, bond and free, were 
rather roughly handled ; few households in the region searched 
were safe from rude intrusion ; many suffered terrifying 
scenes and sounds. 

Peter Woods, sole surviving sufferer and prisoner of the 
occasion, was working for Joseph Scarlet when he and his 
employer were arrested. He tells his story thus to the author 
of this history: 

" The day the fight happened I was up very early. We 
were to have ' a kissing party ' that night for Henry Roberts ; 
and as I wanted to get off early I asked my boss, Joe Scarlet, 
if he would plough if I got up ahead and spread the manure. 
I started at it at two o'clock. The morning was foggy and dull. 
About daylight Elijah Lewis's son came running to me while 
I was getting my work done, and said the kidnappers were 
here. They came to Ellis Irvin's farm, and then to Milt 
Cooper's which is known as the Leaman farm. The morn- 
ing of the riot I got there about seven or eight o'clock. I 
met some of them coming out of the lane, and others were on 
a run from the house. I met Hanway on a bald-faced sorrel 
horse coming down the long lane, and his party with him. 
The other party, the marshal and his people, took to the 
sprouts, licking out for all they could, and then took the 



42 THE CHRISTIANA RIOT. 

JSToble road. There were about sixty of our fellows chasing 
them. The strange party got away. I got hurt by being 
kicked by a blind colt on the hip. The shooting was all 
over. Gorsuch had been killed before I got there. The 
Gorsuch party was riding away as fast as they could. I 
guess I am the last man living of our party. 

"When Scarlet was arrested they were rough in arresting 
him. They took him by the throat, and pointed bayonets 
at him all around him. I said to myself if you arrest a white 
man like that, I wonder what you will do to a black boy? 
The arrests were made a day or two after the riot. I was 
plowing or working the ground, and when I saw the officers 
come to make the arrests, I quickly got unhitched and went 
towards Bushong's, and soon there was six of us together 
and we went to Dr. Dingee's graveyard and hid. We heard a 
racket of horses coming and then we jumped into the grave- 
yard. This was two days after the riot. We hung around 
Rakestraw's too; and he said we could have something to 
eat, but we couldn't stay around there. Then they got us. 
They asked George Boone and James Noble who we are. 
The man with the mace, the marshal I guess, said ' I got a 
warrant for Peter Woods.' They pointed me out and then 
he struck me and then they tried to throw me. They ar- 
rested me and took me up a flight of stairs, and then they tied 
me. Then they started away with me and tried to get me 
over a fence. They had me tied around my legs and around 
my breast, and they put me in a buggy and took me to 
Christiana. From there they took me to Lancaster, and put 
me first iu the old jail and then in the new prison." 

The accuracy of Woods' narrative is attested by the his- 
torical record that at that very time the new Lancaster County 
prison was just ready for occupancy. The first prisoners 
were transferred to it on the day immediately following the 
riot — September 12, 1851. 

Woods' further story of what occurred at Christiana has 



THE "puesuit" and aerests. 43 

all the marks of verity: " There at Christiana was [David] 
Paul Bro^^^i and Thad. Stevens and Mr. Black. They had 
quarters in ' Old Harry's ' store. We did not know who they 
were counsel for, and we thought they were threatening us, 
and trying to make us give away ourselves. Thad. Stevens 
or some one said to me: 'Who do you live with?' They 
had just brought me down from the Harry garret, and Fred 
Zercher was there. Mr. Brown then asked me again how I 
got up there into that garret, who put me there? I made 
up my mind not to talk, and Brown said, ' If you don't tell 
we will send you to jail.' Then a mutiny broke out there. 
George Boone and Proudfoot and others got in it. George 
commenced striking and I got knocked over. Boone was 
taking my part." 

Arrests were numerous and somewhat indiscriminate and 
the charges varied, some relating to State and others to 
Federal laws, and many of them involving capital crimes and 
death penalties. All of them called for appearances and 
preliminary hearings before J. Franklin Reigart, Esq., an 
alderman of Lancaster City. He was a cousin of the late 
Emanuel C. Reigart, Esq., and mingled the pursuits of let- 
ters and law. His handsome picture in lithograph is the 
frontispiece of his somewhat bizarre biography of Robert 
Fulton, now something of a curio, once the ornament of 
many centre tables in Lancaster County. 

Alderman • Reigart was kept busy for some time issuing 
warrants and having hearings that attracted great attention, 
numerous and distinguished lawyers and ever increasing 
popular interest. Among those taken into custody were 
Elijah Lewis, storekeeper at Cooperville ; Joseph Scarlet, 
farmer and dealer ; Castner Hanway, miller at the " Red 
Mill " ; James Jackson, farmer ; Samuel Kendig, all white ; 
and a large number of colored men and women, among them, 
William Brown and William Brown, 2d, Ezekiel Thompson, 
Daniel Caulsberro, Emanuel Smith, John Dobbins, Lewis 



44 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



James Christman, Elijah Clark, Benjamin Pendegress, 
Jonathan Black, Samuel Hanson, Mifflin Flanders, Wilson 
Jones, Francis Hawkins, Benjamin Thompson, John Halli- 
day, Elizabeth Mosey, John Morgan, boy, Joseph Benn, 
John Norton, Lewis Smith, George Washington, Harvey 
Scott, Susan Clark, Tamsy Brown, Eliza Parker, Hannah 
Pinckney, Robert Johnston, Miller Thompson, Isaiah Clark- 
son and Jonathan Black. The officers claimed to have cap- 
tured on the persons or premises of some of them heavily 
charged guns, dirks and clubs. 

The examination of the persons charged before Alderman 
Eeigart for complicity in the affair began in the old Lancas- 
ter County Court House, in Centre Square, on Tuesday, Sep- 
tember 23, at 11 o'clock A.M. The appearances at this hear- 
ing for the prosecution were Attorney General E. T. Brent, of 
Maryland, John M. Ashmead, United States Attorney, Dis- 
trict Attorney John L. Thompson, Colonel William B. Ford- 
ney and Attorney General Thomas E. Franklin. For the de- 
fense, Thaddeus Stevens, George Ford, O. J. Dickey and 
George M. Kline appeared. 

The testimony of Dr. Pearce, Milton Emott and Deputy 
Marshal Kline was relied upon to make out a prima facie 
case. It was at this hearing George Washington Harvey 
Scott, a colored man (who subsequently changed his testi- 
mony in Philadelphia, and swore he was not even at Par- 
ker's), testified that he saw Henry Simms shoot Edward Gor- 
such, and that John Morgan afterwards cut him on the head 
with a corn cutter. Lewis Cooper testified that John Long, 
colored, was on his premises the evening before the occur- 
rence "giving notice." He was with Henry Eeynolds. 
Long was described as a dark mulatto, five and one-half feet 
high, and of slender make. The District Attorney argued that 
the offense was treason, and asked that the persons be com- 
mitted to answer at the Circuit Court of the United States. 
Mr. Stevens made the opening speech before the Alderman, 



THE "pursuit" and ARRESTS. 45 

claiming that the defendant prisoners, especially Lewis and 
Hanway, had not been identified as criminals or offenders; 
he dwelt upon the local kidnappings that had occurred in the 
night time, and charged William Bear and Perry Marsh 
with participation in these offenses ; he produced many wit- 
nesses to the affair and to prove an alibi for some of the 
colored men, especially John Morgan, and nothing worse 
than inaction by Hanway and Lewis. 

The women were all discharged ; and some of the men. 
The names of those who were remanded to Philadelphia to 
await trial in the Federal Courts for treason, together with 
some others subsequently held, and some indicted in their 
absence and never apprehended, will be found in the report 
of the trial later in this history. James Jackson, father of 
William Jackson, now of Christiana was so well known to 
Marshal Roberts that he was released "on parole," though 
subsequently indicted for treason. Mrs. Parker and Mrs. 
Pinckney left the vicinity and made their way to their hus- 
bands in Canada. 



CHAPTEK VIII. 

The PoLiTiCAi, Aftermath. 

Partisans Quick to Make Capital out of the Occurrence — The Demo- 
crats Aggressive — The ' ' Silver Grays ' ' Apologetic, and the ' ' Woolly 
Heads" on the Defensive — Effect of the Christiana Incident on the 
October Elections. 

Thaddeus Stevens in September, 1851, was serving his 
second term as Representative of the Lancaster County dis- 
trict. As an anatgonist of Southern ideas relating to 
slavery, he " strode down the aisles " of the House with a good 
deal more erectness of bearing than Ingersoll in his famous 
nominating speech ascribed to the " Plumed Knight " from 
Maine; and he struck the shield of his adversaries with a 
much louder ring than was given out at the impact of Mr. 
Blaine's lance. To his individual and official view — law or 
no law, constitution or no constitution — slavery was " a 
violation of the rights of man as a man " — freedom was the 
law of nature. Like Mirabeau, " he swallowed all formulas." 
But he was a lawyer, as well as a politician and moralist, and 
while he announced his "unchangeable hostility to slavery 
in every form in every place," he also avowed his " deter- 
mination to stand by all the compromises of the constitution 
and carry them into faithful effect" — much as he disliked 
some of them, they were not "now open for consideration," 
nor would he disturb them. This again was practically an 
admission of the abstract legal right of the master to re- 
claim the fugitive. 

Mr. Stevens was first elected to Congress in 1848, when 
Gen. Zachariah Taylor was elected President, and when he 
died (July 9, 1850), and Fillmore, Vice President and a 
Northern Whig, succeeded him, Stevens had been elected to 
a second term, which lasted until March 4, 1853. 

46 



THE POLITICAL AFTERMATH. 47 

In those " good old days " a Congressman had some in- 
fluence in the matter of Federal appointments. The United 
States Marshal, who executed warrants and picked jurors in 
Eastern Pennsylvania, was Stevens' personal and political 
friend, Anthony E. Roberts. Mr. Roberts, who was a native 
of Chester County, was then 48 years of age and long a promi- 
nent citizen of l^ew Holland. He had been sheriff of Lan- 
caster County elected in 1839 as an avowed anti-Masonic 
candidate, favored by Stevens. He was with him an active 
anti-Mason and was a candidate for Congress in 1843, but 
was beaten by Jei*emiah Brown. President Taylor ap- 
pointed him Marshal in 1849, and he filled the office until 
the incoming of Pierce's administration. 

The Intelligencer and Journal, then edited by George 
Sanderson, w^as the regular organ of the Democratic party 
in Lancaster County. It was a weekly publication, and at 
that time a vigorous and exciting campaign for the State 
election in October was in progress. Col. William Bigler of 
Clearfield County was the Democratic nominee for Governor ; 
General Seth Clover of Clarion County for Canal Commis- 
sioner, and for Judges of the Supreme Court the first ticket 
presented by the Democratic party under the new elective sys- 
tem bore the illustrious names of Jeremiah S. Black, Somer- 
set; James Campbell, Philadelphia; Ellis Lewis, Lancaster; 
John B. Gibson, Cumberland, and Walter H. Lowrie, 
Allegheny. 

The Whig County organ was the Lancaster Examiner and 
Herald, published and edited by Edward C. Darling-ton, who 
was a conspicious leader of what was then known as the 
"Silver Gray" faction of his party — being opposed by the 
more aggressive anti-slavery men, of whom Thaddeus Stevens 
was the leader, and whose followers were derisively styled 
"Woolly Heads." The candidates of the Whig party on 
the State ticket were: for Governor, William F. Johnston, 
Armstrong County (a candidate for re-election) ; for Canal 



48 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

Commissioner, Jolm Strohm, of Lancaster County, and for 
Judges of the Supreme Court, Richard Coulter, Westmore- 
land; Joshua W. Comlj, Montour; George Chambers, 
Franklin ; William M. Meredith, Philadelphia, and William 
Jessup, Susquehanna. 

The fact that the entire Supreme Court membership, then 
numbering five, was to be elected, greatly increased popular 
interest in the result. Pennsylvania was an October State. 
The Darlington faction of the Whig party was in the ascend- 
ancy and Darlington himself was on the ticket for Senator. 
Moses Pownall, of Sadsbury Township, was one of the Whig 
candidates for the Assembly. The regular Democratic Coun- 
ty ticket had not yet been nominated, but the opponents of 
Mr. Buchanan, who were stigmatized as disorganizers and 
" Frazer Ponies," had named a County ticket. 

The first local publications of the tragic occurrences in the 
Chester Valley appeared respectively in the Infelligeticer of 
September 16 and the Examiner of September 17, and their 
local reports of the affair are illustrative not only of the lag- 
gard journalistic enterprise of that day, but of the intense 
partisanship which characterized newspaper management, 
colored the reports of news occurrences and generally per- 
vaded all journalistic work. The Intelligencer s account of 
the affair was printed under a Columbia correspondent's 
" Particulars of the Horrible iN'egro Riot and Murder," and 
the editoral additions to this report commented on the dis- 
graceful conduct of the " Abolition Whig Governor, absent- 
ing himself from the seat of goverament " on an electioneer- 
ing tour, while riots and bloodshed prevailed throughout the 
Commonwealth, and citizens of an adjoining State were 
"murdered in our midst." All these outrages, it charged, 
could be traced to the Executive of the Commonwealth — 
Governor Johnston was then serving his first regular term — 
"roaming about in quest of votes, instead of being at his 
post to enforce the utmost rigor of the law against the white 
and black murderers." 




•■AFTER THE WAR." 
'MAMMY KELLY" WITH THE YOUNGEST GHE»T GRANDCHILD OF EDWARD GORSUCH. 



THE POLITICAL AFTEEMATH. 49 

Further down the same column the editor rejoiced that 
Hanway and Lewis and nine negro accessories had been ar- 
rested and were in prison awaiting trial for murder. Dis- 
trict Attorney John L. Thompson and Alderman J. Frank- 
lin Reigart were warmly praised for "■ ferreting out and 
arresting the guilty ones," while the deposition of Deputy 
Marshal H. H. Kline was presented as a most satisfactory 
account of the "whole transaction." 

The Examiner promptly declared it to be a " dreadful 
tragedy" and "one of the most horrid murders ever perpe- 
trated in this County or State." Manifestly with one eye 
upon the political consequences to the State and local Whig 
ticket, and the other toward the Abolition faction of the 
Whig party, to which Editor Darlington was opposed, his 
newspaper frankly admitted that an awful responsibility 
rested somewhere, and the Examiner believed it to be " our 
duty to speak loudly and distinctly to those individuals who 
evidently have urged the blacks to this horrid measure." It 
deprecated all attempts " to make political capital out of the 
Sadsbury treason and murder by connecting Governor Johns- 
ton's name with that melancholy affair. Intelligent readers 
will regard such efforts with feelings of disgust and contempt." 
But for the white persons under arrest and charged with 
murder and treason, it had no condonation. " Their passions 
had been inflamed by Abolition harangues and incendiary 
speeches franked by members of Congress until they had 
come to look upon treason to the laws of their country as a 
moral duty, and upon murder as not a crime." It declared 
that this was especially perceptible and prevailing in Sads- 
bury and the eastern end of Bart; it recalled with special 
disapprobation the public meeting held at Georgetown, when 
the Griest resolutions were passed. 

Much indignation was expressed by his political opponents 
that Governor Johnston, passing through Christiana on his 
4 



50 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



way from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, on a campaign tour, 
the morning of the affair, did not get off his train at Christi- 
ana where lay the dead body of the Marylander, slain on 
Pennsylvania soil ; though many other passengers did so and 
the train stopped almost at the place where the inquest was 
to be held. 

Democratic campaign meetings held throughout the County 
were quick to turn their sails to catch the currents of popu- 
lar opinion and at an assemblage in Columbia, on September 
13th, IST. B. Wolfe, M.D., later a famous citizen of Cincin- 
nati, Ohio, principal speaker, denounced " the horrid murder 
of Gorsuch" "by a band of desperate negi'oes excited and 
influenced by murderous Abolitionists whose reeking hands 
are still smoking with the warm life's blood of a fellow 
citizen." 

A committee of conspicuous Democrats in Philadelphia, 
including Hon. John Cadwalader, James Page, John W. 
Forney, A. L. Roumfort, Charles Ingersoll, Joseph Swift 
and others, in an "open letter," loudly demanded of the 
Governor that he act for the vindication of the Common- 
wealth and called a public indignation meeting of citizens 
in Independence Square. The Governor responded with a 
rather tart letter and offered $1,000 reward for the arrest of 
the murderers. 

The Intelligencer continued to comment on the tragedy 
as " the legitimate fruit of the policies pursued by Governor 
Johnston and Thaddeus Stevens." In criticized Johnston 
very severely for having passed Christiana without institut- 
ing any "measures to bring the murderers to justice" before 
proceeding on his way; for making political speeches "in- 
stead of seeing that the perpetrators of treason against the 
government and the most bloody murder ever committed in 
this State were brought to justice." Governor Johnston was 
at Ephrata and l^ew Holland on the following Saturday, 
he came to Lancaster on Saturday night, left at midnight 



THE POLITICAL AFTEKMATH. 51 

for Philadelphia, and arrived there about five o'clock A. M. 

Meantime Rev. J. S. Gorsuch, son of Edward Gorsuch and 
brother of Dickinson, wrote to the Baltimore Sun an account 
of the tragedy, which was copied into the Intelligencer and 
other Northern papers as an accurate statement. 

Subsequently he published an open letter to Governor 
Johnston, arraigning him for a lack of ofhcial promptness 
which resulted in the slaves and murderers of his father 
escaping. He recalled that Johnston had refused to honor 
a requisition from the Governor of Maryland for the free 
negi'o, Abe Johnson, who had received the stolen wheat, and 
he declares that that same Johnson whose return was refused 
by the Governor, was present at the riot. He proceeded to 
contrast Johnston's tardiness with "the decision, energy and 
promptness of the Lancaster County officers," who, he said, 
" had to collect a posse of men from iron works and diggings 
on the railroad" to enforce the processes of the law. 

The newspapers report that Alderman Reigart was " re- 
ceiving much commendation in the Southern press for the 
ability and firmness with which he discharged his duties as 
the committing magistrate." In the Baltimore Sun of Oc- 
tober 8, Rev. J. S. Gorsuch had another open letter, this time 
to Attorney General Franklin. Gorsuch had undertaken to 
criticise Governor Johnston without in any way condemning 
his Attorney General. Mr. Franklin had vindicated his chief, 
by declaring that he had done his full duty, and as his legal 
adviser the Attorney General accepted all the responsibility 
for the Governor's conduct. 

The general tendency of the agitation undoubtedly was to 
depress the campaign prospects of the Whigs. Even Phila- 
delphia was extremely conservative and desperately anxious 
to not lose the trade of the South. Bigler carried the State, 
receiving 186,499 votes to 178,034 for Johnston. More than 
that slender majority could be accounted for by the Christi- 
ana riot. In Lancaster County the vote on Governor was: 



52 



THE CHRISTIANA KIOT. 



Democrat, 6,226, Whig, 11,064. What might have happened 
had Mr. Stevens been a candidate for Congress cannot now be 
calculated. He had been re-elected in 1850, receiving 9,565 
votes, to 5,464: for Shaeffer. In 1852 he was not a candidate. 
The late Hon. Isaac E. Hiester was nominated by the " Silver 
Gray Whigs," and received 8,840 votes, to 6,456 for Sample, 
the candidate of the Democratic opposition. In 1854 Stevens 
was not a candidate, but revenged himself on Hiester by 
running Anthony E. Eoberts, the same who had been U. S. 
marshal during the Christiana riots. There was a three- 
cornered fight during that year. Pollock, Whig candidate 
for Governor, had the support of the Know ISTothings, and 
defeated Bigler by 37,000 majority. Lefevre was the third 
candidate for Congress in Lancaster County, and divided 
both the Roberts and Hiester vote, with the result that 
Eoberts received 6,561, Hiester 5,371 and Lefevre 4,266. 
By this time the new Republican party was organized; the 
Silver Gray Whigs went out of the fight ; Roberts, Whig, and 
Hiester, Opposition, were again the candidates, and, although 
Buchanan carried Lancaster County by a plurality of over 
2,000 above Fremont and more than 4,000 above Fillmore, 
Roberts was elected to Congress, receiving 10,001 votes to 
Hiester's 8,320. In 1858 Stevens again became a candidate 
for the 36th Congress, and was elected over James M. Hop- 
kins, by the following vote: Stevens, 9,513; Hopkins, 6,341. 
The latter had been one of the jury in "the treason trial" 
and had some support from Stevens' Whig opponents. 
Stevens, however, got some Democratic aid. Thenceforth the 
power of Darlington and "the Silver Grays" was broken; 
Republicanism was in the local ascendancy with Stevens as 
its leader; he never lost his control until his death — his last 
nomination being conferred upon him by popular vote when 
his body was encoffined, the ballots having been printed be- 
fore he died. 



THE POLITICAL AFTEEMATH. 53 

If the effect of the agitation elected Bigler, it strengthened 
the Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, whose choice 
the Governor-elect was. If it was not able to control the 
National convention of 1852, it succeeded in defeating Cass, 
who was Buchanan's chief rival, and thus was helped the 
nomination of the Lancaster County candidate for Presi- 
dency in 185G. Though Bigler was defeated for a second 
Gubernatorial term, he was elected United States Senator in 
1855. The election of four Democratic Supreme Court 
Judges in Pennsylvania in 1851 was one of the results of the 
Christiana riot. James Campbell, alone of the Democratic 
nominees was defeated. He was a Catholic and the Know 
ISTothing opposition to him centred upon Coulter, and elected 
him; he had been on the bench 1846-7. Campbell became 
Postmaster General under Pierce. 

Meantime the dead body of Edward Gorsuch was taken by 
rail to Columbia, and via York on the I*^orthern Central 
Railroad, to Monkton, where a throng of mourning neigh- 
bors met it and great local excitement prevailed. There being 
no convenient hearse and the distance too long for pall- 
bearers, it was carried by the four-horse team of Eliphalet 
Parsons to Mr. Gorsuch's home. There, after a brief service 
by Pev. Vinton, it was committed to a family burying ground, 
where the body has rested undisturbed for sixty years. This 
private graveyard on the Gorsuch farm is located on an 
eminence in the midst of a fine orchard of apple trees, and 
overlooking the wide expanse of country to the southwest 
and traversed by Piney Pun, a tributary to the Gunpowder. 
The gTaveyard is about twenty-five by thirty-five feet, sur- 
rounded by a massive stone wall, without any gate or en- 
trance. The former opening to it was walled up by direc- 
tion of and with a legacy left for that purpose by a son 
Thomas. There remain three low gravestones, of uniform 
pattern, the central one of which has the initials " E. G." 
The occupants of the other two graves are unknown, and 



54 THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 

there is nothing to indicate who they were. Rev. John S. 
Gorsuch, son of Edward and who was very conspicuous in 
the agitation over his killing, was formerly buried in this 
graveyard, but his remains have been removed therefrom. 
He died at 32 of typhoid fever the March after his father, and 
while attending a M.E. conference. The little graveyard 
is overgTOwn with myrtle. Human hands have not desecrated 
it in any way, but there is evidence that the gnawing teeth of 
rodent vandals have been at work on the graves. 



,:^' 



d u 






t^ :^-.t.5; 




■'^^^ 



•^ '. 



■^I:^ 






CHAPTEK IX. 

Befoee the Trial. 

Popular Discussion Precedes the Arraignment — Legal Questions Eaised 
by Eminent Lawyers — Judge Kane takes High Ground Against 
Treason — The Selection of the Jury — A Eepresentative Panel. 

Pending the arraignment of the prisoners in the United 
States Conrt for treason, the affair was made the subject of 
extended popular discussion. Fiery Southern journals and 
orators reflected the views that had been early expressed by 
Governor Lowe to President Fillmore, for his own State of 
Maryland, that if slave ovniers could not without incurring 
the risk of death pursue their property iN'orth and reclaim it, 
Secession and Disunion were inevitable. Quite as fierce and 
fiery champions of Abolitionism retorted with equal fervor 
and contempt for a league with iniquity and a covenant with 
slavery, and for a "flaunting lie" that flung the banner of 
freedom over a human race in chains. The great mass of 
conservative citizens stood for both law and liberty; and 
heard with sympathetic ears Webster's great and eloquent 
pleas for " Liberty and Union — one and inseparable." 

Joshua R. Giddings, in a speech at Worcester, in the early 
part of IN^ovember, before the trial, publicly rejoiced in the 
killing of Gorsuch and that the fugitives " stood up manfully 
in defense of their God-given rights and shot down the 
miscreants, who had come with the desperate purpose of 
taking them again to the land of slavery." 

It is a notable coincidence that just at this time the 
National Era, an Abolition paper in Washington, D. C, 
edited by Gamaliel Bailey, was beginning to publish as a 
weekly serial the first and copyrighted edition of " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin." ISTeither the authoress nor the general reading 

55 



56 



THE CHKISTIANA EIOT. 



public then appreciated the power and interest of the work, 
nor nntil i't appeared later in book form. 

The rashness of the Gorsuches in incurring danger and 
inviting death by venturing into an unfriendly country for 
an unpopular cause, was cited in mitigation of the indict- 
ment against a whole community for lawlessness. The 
blunders of the Deputy Marshal in giving his official errand 
the aspect of a warlike incursion was urged as a reasonable 
explanation for what was charged as popular indifference in 
the locality toward a dark crime. 

Withal lawyers and laymen found subject for protracted 
discussion in the vexed question as to whether it was " trea- 
son " ; and what degTce of opposition or what extent of resist- 
ance to law constituted this high crime of such infrequent 
occurrence. 

The cases of the Whiskey Insurrectionists in western Penn- 
sylvania, and Aaron Burr's trial at Richmond, Virginia, had 
almost faded from popular memory. But there were those 
in eastern Pennsylvania who recalled some of the echoes of 
the Fries treason case ; and its analogies with the impending 
trial of nearly forty Lancaster County people were curiously 
scanned by legal pundits on the Court House benches and by 
local sages on the country store boxes. 

The case of United States vs. John Fries arose out of the 
opposition of the Pennsylvania Germans in Bucks, N^orth- 
ampton and Berks Counties to the collection of a direct 
Federal tax known as " The House Tax." Assessors had to 
measure houses to levy the tax. Hostile public meetings were 
held at which John Fries threatened and encouraged armed 
resistance to the tax. Armed and with martial music he and 
his followers paraded the public highways, intimidating 
tax officials, denouncing Congress and the government as 
"damned rog-ues," etc. Fries had two trials, in both of 
which he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be 
hanged. He was subsequently pardoned by President John 




»: 



THADDEUS STEVENS. 
IN THE DAYS OF HIS CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP. 



BEFORE THE TRIAL. 57 

Adams. He was originally tried and convicted before Judges 
Iredell and Peters, in 1799 ; and his case is reported in 3 
Dallas (Fed. Court Eep.), 515. 

As early as ISTovember 18, 1850, Hon, John K. Kane, 
United States District Judge at Philadelphia, had charged 
the Grand Jury at some length — and not without consider- 
able personal feeling in relation to the State of Pennsylvania 
statutes — on the subject of the Fugitive Slave Law. Judge 
Kane had been District Attorney and he was Attorney Gen- 
eral of Pennsylvania under Governor Shunk from Jan. 21, 
1845, to June 23, 1846. His appointment as Attorney Gen- 
eral was offensive to Mr. Buchanan. 

Notwithstanding the Supreme Court of the United States 
in the Prigg case had intimated that legislation of this char- 
acter was for the Federal Government and not for the State, 
Judge Kane severely reprehended the Pennsylvania Act of 
1847, which repealed the Acts of 1826 and 1827, delegating 
to State authorities the right to issue warrants for fugitives ; 
he declared the new Fugitive Slave Law of CongTess to be 
little different from the Pennsylvania statute of 1826, and 
he depicted the results of the Pennsylvania law in these 
rather lurid terms : " Fanatics of civil discord have, mean- 
while, exulted in the fresh powers of harm with which this 
state of things invested them; and the country has been 
convulsed in its length and breadth, as if about to be rent 
asunder, and tossed in frag-mcnts, by the outbursting of a 
volcano." 

He went on to say that the new Federal law must be 
obeyed, and the penalties for violating it were to be enforced 
without fear, favor or affection. He referred to his district 
as a community which had suffered in reputation and repose 
" from crimes of excitement, turbulence and force," and in- 
veighed against disobedience to a statute, obstructing officers 
of the law and deeds of violent resistance against them. 

The langiiage of this charge, and his well-known views on 



58 THE CHRISTIA]NrA EIOT. 

the legal and political aspects of the question, did not afford a 
very encouraging outlook for those who were to be tried be- 
fore him or in his court. These very natural apprehensions 
were increased, when his charge to the grand jury followed on 
September 29, 1851. He briefly reviewed the reported facts 
of the Christiana affair, and though he avowed entire free- 
dom from any impressions of the guilt or innocence of the 
accused, he pointed to the charges made against them as suffi- 
cient to establish the crime of treason if they were duly 
proved. He also pointed out that as the offence of treason 
was not triable in his Court, and though the grand jury then 
empannelled could not take cognizance of the indictments, 
his learned brother of the Supreme Court, the Hon, Robert 
C. Grier, who presided in this circuit, would sit on the trial 
of the cause. Justice Grier was a Pennsylvanian, appointed 
by President Tyler in 1844, to succeed Henry R. Baldwin, 
deceased. 

The result of the submission to the Grand Inquest for 
the United States inquiring for the Eastern District of Penn- 
sylvania to the August Term, 1851, was that they found true 
bills for treason against the following persons, which indict- 
ments were, on October 6, 1851, remitted from the District 
Court to the Circuit Court : 

1. Castner Hanway. 20. Collister Wilson. 

2. Joseph Scarlet. 21. John Jackson. 

3. Elijah Lewis. 22. William Brown. 

4. James Jackson. 23. Isaiah Clarkson. 

5. George Williams. 24. Henry Simnis. 

6. Jacob Moore. 25. Charles Hunter. 

7. George Reed. 26. Lewis Gates. 

8. Benjamin Johnson. 27. Peter Woods. 

9. Daniel Caulsberry. 28. Lewis Clarkson. 

10. Alson Pernsley. 29. l^elson Carter. 

11. William Bro\vn, 2nd. 30. William Parker. 

12. Henry Green. 31. John Berry. 



BEFOEE THE TRIAL. 59 

13. Elijah Clark. 32. William Berry. 

14. John Holliday. 33. Samuel Williams. 

15. William Williams. 34. Josh Hammond. 

16. Benjamin Pindergast. 35. Henry Curtis. 

17. John Morgan. 36. Washington Williams. 

18. Ezekiel Thompson. 37. William Thomas. 

19. Thomas Butler. 38. Nelson Ford. 

The District Attorney then moved for a venire to issue 
to the marshal, who was commanded to return 108 jurors, of 
whom 12 were to be summoned and returned from Lan- 
caster County, where the offenses charged were perpetrated. 

The selection of jurors for this trial, under all the condi- 
tions we have tried to sketch impartially, was a delicate and 
difficult task for Marshal Roberts — in view of his well- 
known political opinions and of his personal and partisan 
affiliations with Thaddeus Stevens, chief counsel for the de- 
fense from start to finish. The character and associations of 
the members of the panel may be gathered to some extent 
even now from the attitude assumed toward them by counsel 
on either side. In a subsequent chapter will be briefly epito- 
mized the disposition made of those whose names were called. 
Keeping it in mind, the author, from a large historical ac- 
quaintance with the leading men of that period in the coun- 
ties of the State from which this panel was chosen, does not 
hesitate to say that it was high above the average in intelli- 
gence and all other requisites for important jury service; 
that it was eminently representative and an altogether fit and 
fair enrollment. This opinion is not only now justified, but 
it is fairly demanded by reason of the criticism Attorney 
General Brent made in his report to IMaryland's Governor 
upon the disadvantage to which the prosecution was sub- 
jected in the personnel of the venire. 

During their stay in Moyamensing the prisoners suffered 
for a time from lack of heat and ventilation until conditions 
were remedied. Some of them were confined in the Debtors' 



60 



THE CHRISTIANA RIOT. 



Apartments. Witnesses deemed necessary to hold were de- 
tained bj the Government under pay of $1.25 per day to 
them. Peter Woods relates that Ezekiel Thompson and 
Henry Simms engaged so frequently in loud prayer that out- 
siders were attracted to the prison walls to listen to them 
from the adjoining sidewalks. By November 15th it tran- 
spired that two witnesses, Peter Washington and John Clark, 
detained in the Debtors' Apartments, had escaped. David 
Paul Brown said one of them was important for his client 
Joseph Scarlet, while the United States was insistent that it 
needed them also. Mr. Brent finds cause for suspicion and 
complaint in the allegation that they got out without breaking 
a lock through inside treachery, of which he " cheerfully " 
acquits Marshal Roberts; but neither throughout nor after 
the trial does Mr. Brent present himself as an altogether 
cheerful person. 



CHAPTEK X. 

"The Teeason Trials." 

Differences of Opinion Among Counsel for the Government — A Bril- 
liant Array of Lawyers — Selecting Twelve Men, ' ' Good and True, ' ' 
from a Large Venire — The Prisoners Arraigned and Pleas Entered. 

In the so-called official report of the Castner Hanway 
trial, which involved the final disposition of all the treason 
cases, it is fitly stated by the author and editor that "the 
ability which marked the trial throughout, the patient atten- 
tion of the judges, the eloquence and learning of the Counsel, 
and the full examination of every matter of fact and law in 
any manner involved, gave to the trial a deep and abiding 
importance, such as will make its perusal interesting to the 
general reader, and of indispensable use to the Legal Pro- 
fession." It is not to be expected, however, that a detailed 
report of these proceedings or a presentation of their technical 
aspect falls within the scope or prescribed limits of this 
sketch. Those desirous of perusing them can get access to 
Mr. Robbins' report in many libraries ; lawyers will find the 
case reported for their special benefit in Vol. II of Wallace's 
Report of Circuit Court Cases for the Third District, pp. 
134r-208. The rejDort of Attorney General Brent and the 
message of Governor Lowe, in the Maryland State Docu- 
ments, 1852, constitute an interesting history of the facts 
and valuable discussion of the law; and Mr. Jackson's reply 
undoubtedly corrects and modifies some of the impressions 
that the complaints of the Marylanders would tend to create. 

Even outside of these quasi-official documents there remain 
signs that there was some division of counsel, if not conflict 
of opinion, among those engaged in the prosecution as to the 
most expedient course to take and the more effective remedy 

61 



62 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



to apply to the broken law. Whatever the private opinion of 
U. S. District Attorney Ashmead may have been, his presen- 
tation of the case and his entire part in the trial evinced no 
lack of preparation or ability and no want of sincerity in the 
Government's canse. He shrank from no responsibility that 
his position imposed. He was, moreover, the direct represen- 
tative of the Law Department of the Fillmore administra- 
tion. His chief was Attorney General John J. Crittenden 
and Daniel Webster was the premier of that Cabinet. There 
was at that time no " Department of Justice " as now organ- 
ized; there was simply the office of the Attorney General, 
and an investigation of the archives of the Department fails 
to disclose anything whatever with respect to the affray or 
the trials. There is, however, authority for the statement 
that the final determination to prosecute for treason was made 
by Webster and Crittenden, who concluded and advised " that 
even if a conviction were not obtained, the effect of the trial 
would be salutary in checking N^orthern opposition to the 
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act." 

Some question of professional etiquette arose between 
counsel who appeared for the State of Maryland and those 
who represented the United States by direct employment for 
the Government. Mr. Brent reports that this was " satis- 
factorily adjusted in a personal interview" with Mr. Ash- 
mead. He further says : 

" This gentleman, in the presence of the Hon. James 
Cooper, tendered to me the position of leading counsel in 
these trials, which I promptly declined, on the ground that I 
never had claimed such precedence for myself, as well as on 
grounds of policy and expediency for the prosecution. 

" It was then agreed that the Hon. James Cooper, of Penn- 
sylvania (the distinguished colleague associated with me for 
the State of Maryland), should occupy the position of leading 
counsel, which he did with fidelity and sig-nal ability. I 
will here take occasion to remark that, however unfortunate 




JOHN W. ASHMEAD. 
U. S. ATTORNEY WHO CONDUCTED THE PROSECUTION. 



THE TREASON TRIALS. 



63 



the preliminary difficulty between Mr. Ashmead and myself, 
and however prejudicial it may have been to the development 
of the evidence, by preventing that early interchange of views 
and information, which was necessary to a thorough prepa- 
ration of these important cases, yet I received during the 
trial every social and professional courtesy at the hands of 
that gentleman, and he was at all times prompt to act upon 
any suggestion which might be made by either Mr. Cooper 
or myself." 

Whatever may have been the nature of their difficulties 
or the character of their settlement, there was a good deal of 
" girding " during the trial from the defense at the relations 
of the various opposing counsel ; and there was some recrimi- 
nation after the Government's defeat over the responsibility 
for what its representatives thought was a miscarriage of 
justice. When the lawyers were finally lined up the record 
showed these appearances: J. W. Ashmead, D. A. U. S., 
G. L. Ashmead and J. K. Ludlow represented the United 
States: E. J. Brent, Attorney General of Maryland, James 
Cooper, a Senator of the United States for Pennsylvania, 
and R. M. Lee, of Philadelphia, appeared as special counsel ; 
Mr. Brent by order of the Governor of IMaryland, of which 
State Mr. Gorsuch was a citizen; Mr. Cooper and Lee also 
private counsel of Mr. Gorsuch's relatives : For the prisoner, 
J. J. Lewis, of West Chester, Th. Stevens, of Lancaster, John 
M. Eead, T. A. Cuyler and W. A. Jackson, of Philadelphia. 

David Paul Brown also sat at the prisoners' counsel table ; 
he appeared for Joseph Scarlet, whose case, with that of 
others, depended on the result of Ilanway's trial. 

Most of these names will be remembered by the general 
reader as already eminent or soon to so become. The Ash- 
meads were notably able lawyers; Mr. Brent had high pro- 
fessional position ; James Cooper was then L"^nitcd States Sen- 
ator, from Pennsylvania ; Ludlow later became a member of 
the Philadelphia judiciary; Lewis of West Chester and Ste- 



64 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



vens of Lancaster were leaders of their respective county 
bars. John M. Read was later to be a member of the Su- 
preme Court of Pennsylvania. Theo. A. Cuyler was long 
one of the foremost of Philadelphia's lawyers. Mr. Jackson, 
junior counsel and historian of the defense, died Jan. 10, 
1857, aged 29, and after less than six years his promising 
career ended. 

The trial was held in the second story room of old Inde- 
pendence Hall and sentimentalists speculated as to whether 
the cause of Law or Liberty would prevail in a historic 
building consecrated to both these vital principles of organ- 
ized society. It had been refitted for the occasion with new 
gas fixtures and special ventilating devices. The opening day 
did not attract the concourse that thronged the chamber 
and corridors as the trial progressed, but the seating capacity 
of the room was fully occupied. 

Court opened at 11 A.M. Monday, ^N'ovember 24, 1851. 
Seventy-eight jurors answered; and Judge Grier ordered a 
call of the defaulters under promise of a $100 fine to those 
who were in default until next morning. Jurors called and 
some missing with one accord then began to make excuse. 
Before the session adjourned eighty-one answered and it ap- 
j)eared that nineteen had been previously excused. Arrange- 
ments were made for reporting the proceedings; there was 
some discussion over the impanelling of the jurors, but 
nobody was disposed to quash or continue ; the prisoner, Cast- 
ner Hanway, was arraigned and pleaded. The questions 
to jurors were framed upon the replies to which challenges 
were to be based, and the first juror, David George, was 
called on the second day of the trial. 

Thence the selection of jurors proceeded until twelve men 
were secured satisfactory to both sides. This occupied the 
Court until Wednesday evening. JSText day being Thanks- 
giving the trial was adjourned until Friday morning, the 
jury selected being accommodated and lodged at the Ameri- 
can Hotel, opposite the old State House. 



"the tkeason" trials." 65 

An essential part of this narrative, in its political and 
popular interest, is the personnel of the entire venire of 
jurors. It is here given with brief memoranda abstracted 
from the official report, indicating what disposition was 
made of each person called. Where there are no comments 
the juror was not called; and the twelve finally sworn are 
each marked with a *. 

1. Adams, Peter, Farmer, Mohnsville P. O., Berks County. 

2. Baldwin, Matthias W., Machinist, 335 Spruce St., 
Philadelphia. Founder of Baldwin's Locomotive Works. 
Stood aside. 

3. Barclay, Andrew C, Gentleman, 147 Arch St., Phila- 
delphia. Challenged by defendant; had an opinion. 

4. Bazley, John T., Gentleman, Doylestown, Bucks 
County. Challenged by prisoner. 

5. Beck, John, Professor, Lititz, Lancaster Co. Principal 
of famous Boys' School; Excused at Mr. Stevens' instance 
because " the school could not get on without him ;" grand- 
father of Hon. Jas. M. Beck. 

6. Bell, Samuel, Gentleman, Reading, Berks County. 
Associate (Lay) judge and excused. 

7. Brady, Patrick, Merchant, 397 Arch St., Philadelphia. 
Challenged by prisoner for opinion. 

8. Breck, Samuel, Gentleman, Arch St., west of Broad, 
Philadelphia. Prominent citizen; aged 81 and deaf; Ex- 
cused. 

9. Brinton, Ferree, Merchant, Belmont P. O., Lancaster 
Co. Later associate judge; father-in-law of Judge Wiltbank, 
of Philadelphia. Stood aside. 

10. Broadhead, Albert G., Farmer, Delaware P. 0., Pike 
Co. Deficient hearing and frequent headaches ; Excused. 

11. Brown, John A., Merchant, S.E. Cor. 12th and Chest- 
nut Sts., Phila. Challenged by prisoner. 

12. Brown, Joseph D., Gentleman, 167 Arch St., Phila- 
delphia. 

5 



66 THE CHKISTIANA EIOT. 

13. Brush, George G., Merchant, Washington, Lancaster 
Co. A prominent citizen and Democrat. Challenged by 
prisoner. 

14. Butler, Eobert, Clerk, Mauch Chunk, Carbon Co. 

15. Cadwalader, George, Gentleman, 299 Chestnut St., 
Philadelphia. Excused temporarily. Prominent Philadel- 
phia Democrat. Subsequently called and challenged by 
prisoner. 

16. Cameron, Simon, Gentleman, Middletown, Dauphin 
Co. Ex U. S. Senator. Unwell and temporarily excused. 

17. Campbell, Hugh, Merchant, 33 Girard Street, Phila- 
delphia. 

18. Clendenin, John, Gentleman, Hoagstown, Cumberland 
Co. Challenged by defendant. 

19. Cockley, David, Machinist, Lancaster City. Chal- 
lenged by U. S. for opinion. 

20. Cook, Jonathan, Gentleman, AUentown, Lehigh Co. 
Challenged for opinion by defendant. 

21. Coolbaugh, Moses W., Farmer, Coolbaugh P. 0., Mon- 
roe County. Challenged by prisoner. 

22. ^Connelly, Thomas, Carpenter, Beaver Meadow, Car- 
bon Co. Accepted and sworn (3). 

23. Cope, Caleb, Merchant, Walnut & Quince Sts., Phila- 
delphia. Applied for excuse; refused as he was "not over 
60." Recalled and not answering, fined. Subsequently re- 
mitted on account of ill health. 

24. *Cowden, James, Merchant, Columbia, Lancaster Co. 
Stood aside at first, finally accepted (12). 

25. Culbertson, Joseph, Gentleman, Chambersburg, Frank- 
lin Co. " Excused for age, hardness of hearing and vertigo." 

26. Darby, John, Gentleman, Fayetteville, Eranklin Co. 
Enfeebled; deaf; excused. 

27. Davies, Edward, Gentleman, Churchtown, Lancaster 
Co. Stood aside. 

28. Deshong, John 0., Gentleman, Chester, Delaware Co. 
Stood aside. 



"the teeasox tkials." 67 

29. Diller, Solomon, Farmer, l^ew Holland, Lancaster 
Co. Stood aside. 

30. Elder, Joshua, Farmer, Harrisburg, Dauphin Co. 
Stood aside. 

31. Dillinger, Jacob, Gentleman, Allentown, Lehigh Co. 
Excused because of "kidney trouble." Conspicuous Demo- 
crat. 

32. *Elliot, Eobert, Farmer, Ickesburg, Perry Co. Ac- 
cepted and sworn (2). 

33. Ewing, Eobert, Merchant, 446 Walnut St., Philadel- 
phia. Challenged by defendant. 

34. *Fenton, Ephraim, Fanner, Upper Dublin P. O., 
Montgomery Co. Stood aside. Subsequently recalled and 
accepted (11). 

35. Fraley, Frederick, Gentleman, 365 Pace St., Phila- 
delphia. President of Schuylkill Navigation Company ; Ex- 
cused temporarily. Conspicuous citizen. Treasurer Cen- 
tennial Company in 1876. 

36. George, David, Gentleman, Blockley, West Phila. P. 
O., Philadelphia Co. Stood aside. Recalled and challenged 
by U. S. 

37. Gowen, James, Gentleman, Germantown, Philadel- 
phia Co. Father of P. & E. President F. B. Gowen. Chal- 
lenged by prisoner. Democrat. 

38. Grosh, Jacob, Gentleman, Marietta, Lancaster Co. 
Political friend of Stevens. Associate (lay) judge, 1842-47. 
Stood aside. 

39. Hammer, Jacob, Merchant, Orwigsburg, Schuylkill 
Co. Associate (lay) Judge ; Excused on account of his wife's 
illness. 

40. Harper, James, Gentleman, Walnut & Schuylkill 
Fifth Sts., Phila. Challenged by prisoner. 

41. Hazard, Erskine, Gentleman, ISTinth & Chestnut Sts., 
Philadelphia. Father-in-law of Samuel Dickson, later one 
of the leaders of the Philadelphia bar. Challenged by the 
prisoner. Democrat; merchant; iron master. 



68 



THE CHRISTIANA RIOT. 



42. Hippie, Frederick, Farmer, Bainbridge, Lancaster 
Co. Stood aside. 

43. Hitner, Daniel O., Farmer, Wbitemarsb, Montgomery- 
Co. Cballenged by jDrisoner. 

44. *Hopkins, James M., Farmer, Bucks P. O., Driimore 
Twp., Lancaster Co. Ironmaster, Conowingo furnace. 
Fusion Candidate for Congress against Stevens in 1858. 
Accepted (7). 

45. Horn, Jobn, Gentleman, 16 Broad St., Pbiladelpbia. 
Biased in favor of defendant and cballenged for cause by 
U.S. 

46. Hummel, Valentine, Mercbant, Harrisburg, Daupbin 
Co. 

47. Jenks, Micbael H., Gentleman, N'ewton, Bucks Co. 

48. *Junkin, Jobn, Farmer, Landisburg, Perry Co. Ac- 
cepted (8). 

49. Keim, William H., Mercbant, Reading, Berks Co. 
Stood aside. 

50. Keyser, Elbanan W., Mercbant, 144 l^orth. Nintb St., 
Pbiladelpbia. 

51. Kicbline, Jacob, Farmer, Lower Saucon P. O., ISTortb- 
ampton Co. Cballenged by prisoner. 

52. Kinnard, Jobn H., Farmer, West Wbiteland P. O., 
Cbester Co. Stood aside. 

53. Krause, Jobn, Clerk, Lebanon, Lebanon Co. Stood 
aside ; bad conscientious scruples against deatb penalty. 

54. Kubn, Hartman, Gentleman, 314 Cbestnut St., Pbila- 
delpbia. Conspicuous citizen ; descendant of old Lancaster 
family ; Cballenged by LT, S, for opinion. 

55. Ladley, George, Farmer, Oxford P. O., Cbester Co. 
Stood aside. 

56. Leiper, George G., Farmer, Leiperville, Delaware Co. 
Associate (lay) judge; excused. Prominent Democrat and 
intimate friend of James Bucbanan, to his latest day. 

57. Lewis, Lawrence, Gentleman, 345 Cbestnut St., Pbila- 



"the TEEASOlSr TRIALS." 69 

delphia. President IMiitual Insurance Company; very busy. 
Excused for a fortnight. 

58. Luther, Diller, Gentleman, Reading, Berks Co. Chal- 
lenged by prisoner. 

59. Lyons, David, Farmer, Haverford P. O., Delaware Co. 
Challenged by prisoner. 

60. McConkcy, James, Merchant, Peachbottom P. O., 
York Co. Deaf and deputy postmaster; excused. Of old 
Democratic family. 

61. Mcllvaine, Abraham E., Farmer, Wallace P. O., 
Chester County. 

62. McKean, Thomas, Gentleman, 356 Spruce St., Phila- 
delphia. Excused on account of illness. Leading citizen 
and member of distinguished family. 

63. Madeira, George A., Gentleman, Chambersburg, 
Franklin Co. Stood aside. 

64. Mark, George, Gentleman, Lebanon, Lebanon Co. 
Stood aside. 

65. *Martin, Peter, Surveyor, Ephrata P. O., Lancaster 
Co. Anti-Buchanan Democrat; later associate judge and 
prothonotary ; "was under the impression offense might be 
treason." Accepted (4). 

66. Massey, Charles, Merchant, 170 Arch St. Philadel- 
phia. Excused on account of ill health. 

67. Mather, Isaac, Farmer, Jenkintown, Montgomery Co. 
Stood aside. 

68. Merkle, Levi, Farmer, Shiremanstown, Cumberland 
Co. Stood aside. 

69. Michler, Peter S., Merchant, Easton, Northampton 
Co. 

70. Miller, John, Gentleman, Beading, Berks Co. Chal- 
lenged by the prisoner. Excused. 

71. Moore, Marmaduke, Merchant, 153 l^orth Thirteenth 
St., Philadelphia. A prominent Democrat. Challenged by 
prisoner. 



70 



THE CHRISTIANA RIOT. 



72. Morton, Sketchley, Farmer, Gibbon's Tavern P. O., 
Delaware Co. Stood aside. 

73. Myers, Isaac, Merchant, Port Carbon, Scbuylkill Co. 

74. 'NeS, John K., Merchant, 124 Spruce St., Philadel- 
phia. Excused for absence from the State. 

75. Newcomer, Martin, Innkeeper, Chambersburg, Frank- 
lin Co. Challenged by U. S. for opinion. 

76. *]Srewman, Solomon, Smith, Milford, Pike Co. First 
juror drawn. Stood aside. Subsequently accepted (9). 

77. Palmer, Strange N"., Editor, Pottsville, Schuylkill Co. 
Stood aside. 

78. Patterson, Eobert, Merchant, S. W. cor. Thirteenth 
and Locust Sts. Had decided opinions. Challenged by 
prisoner. 

79. Penny, James, Farmer, Liberty Square P. O., Dru- 
more Twp., Lancaster County. Stood aside. ^Neighbor to 
Quaker Abolitionists. 

80. Piatt, William, Merchant, 343 Chestnut St. Phila- 
delphia. Excused because of ill health. 

81. Preston, Paul S., Merchant, Stockport, Wayne Co. 
Stood aside. 

82. Peynolds, John, Gentleman, Lancaster City. Father 
of Gen. John F. Reynolds and Admiral Wm. Reynolds and 
former proprietor of a Democratic newspaper in Lancaster. 
Examined at length ; showed disfavor to defendants and was 
challenged peremptorily by Stevens. 

83. Rich, Josiah, Farmer, Danboro P. O., Bucks Co. 
Stood aside. 

84. Richards, Matthias, Gentleman, Reading, Berks Co. 
Challenged by prisoner. 

85. Richardson, John, Gentleman, Spruce St., west of 
Broad, Philadelphia. President of Bank of l!^orth America. 
Excused temporarily for bronchial affection. 

86. Rogers, Evan, Gentleman, Locust St. and Washington 
Square. Challenged for cause by defendant. 



" THE TEEASON TKIALS." 7 1 

87. Eoss, Ilngii, Farmer, Lower Chanceford Co., York 
Co. Challenged for cause by defendant. Scotch Irish, 
Presbyterian, Democrat. 

88. Rupp, John, Farmer, Mechanicksburg P. O., Hemp- 
den Twp., Cumberland Co, Associate judge; excused tem- 
porarily. Recalled and challenged by U. S. because he was 
opposed to death penalty. 

89. Rutherford, John B., Farmer, Harrisburg, Dauphin 
Co. Stood aside. 

90. ^Saddler, William R., York Sulphur Springs P. O., 
Adams Co. Accepted (6). 

91. Saylor, Charles, Merchant, Saylorsburg, Monroe Co. 
Postmaster. Excused. 

92. Schroeder, John S., Clerk, Reading, Berks Co. 
Challenged by prisoner. 

93. Small, Samuel, Merchant, York, York Co. Prominent 
citizen and representative of notable family. Stood aside. 

94. Smith, George, Farmer, Upper Darby P. O., Dela- 
ware Co. Stood aside. 

95. Smith, John, Smith, Jenkintown, Montgomery Co. 
Challenged by defendant; extended discussion; challenge 
sustained. 

96. *Smith, Robert, Gentleman, Gettysburg, Adams Co. 
Accepted (5). 

97. Smyser, Philip, Gentleman, York, York Co. Chal- 
lenged for cause. 

98. Starbird, Franklin, Farmer, Stroudsburg, Monroe 
Co. Stood aside. 

99. Stavely, William, Farmer, Lahasha P. O., Bucks Co. 
Challenged by prisoner. 

100. Stevens, William, Merchant, Whitehallville, Bucks 
Co. Challenged by prisoner. 

101. Stokes, Samuel E., Merchant, 39 Arch St., Phila- 
delphia. 

102. Taylor, Caleb X., Farmer, Newportville, Bucks Co. 



72 



THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 



Suffering from what Judge Grier called " Epidemic of deaf- 
ness." Excused. 

103. Toland, George W., Gentleman, 178 Arch St., 
Philadelphia. 

104. Trexler, Lesher, Gentleman, Allentown, Lehigh Co. 
Stood aside. 

105. Wainwright, Jonathan, Merchant, Beach, below 
Hanover St., Philadelphia. Stood aside. Subsequently re- 
called and accepted (10). 

106. Walsh, Eobert F., Merchant, 5 Girard St., Phila- 
delphia. " Thought the offense treason." Challenged by the 
Court. 

107. Watmough, John G., Gentleman, Germantown, 
Philadelphia County. " Strongly against the whole busi- 
ness." Challenged by U. S. 

108. Watson, William, Farmer, Mechanicsville, Bucks Co. 
Stood aside. 

109. West, David, Farmer, Kimberton, Chester Co. 
Stood aside. 

110. White, Thomas, H., Gentleman, 'N. W. Cor. Ninth & 
Spruce Sts., Philadelphia. Challenged for opinion by U. S. 

111. Whitehall, James, Gentleman, Lancaster City. Chal- 
lenged by prisoner. 

112. Witman, Andrew K., Farmer, Center Valley P. O., 
Lehigh Co. From neighborhood of Fries rebellion. Chal- 
lenged by U. S. for opinion, after long discussion. 

113. Williamson, William, Gentleman, West Chester, 
Chester Co. Challenged by prisoner. 

114. *Wilson, James, Gentleman, Fairfield P. O., Adams 
Co. Accepted and sworn (3). From neighborhood of 
Stevens' iron works. 

115. Vanzant, Franklin, Farmer, Attleboro P. O., Bucks 
Co. Two children sick. Excused temporarily. 

116. Yohe, Samuel, Gentleman, Easton, Northampton Co. 
Stood aside. 



"the teeason trials." 73 

As finally selected the trial jury consisted of the follow- 
ing persons : 

1. Robert Elliott, farmer, Ickesburg, Perry County, 
aged 69. 

2. James Wilson, gentleman, Fairfield postoffice, Adams 
County, aged 73. 

3. Thomas Connelly, carpenter, Beaver Meadow, Car- 
bon County, aged 54. 

4. Peter Martin, surveyor, Ephrata postoffice, Lancaster 
County, aged 46. 

5. Robert Smith, gentleman, Gettysburg, Adams County, 
aged 57. 

6. William R. Saddler, farmer, York Sulphur Springs 
postoffice, Adams County, aged 41. 

7. James M. Hopkins, farmer, Bucks postoffice, Drumore 
Township, Lancaster County, aged 50. 

8. John Junkin, farmer, Landisburg, Perry County, 
aged 56. 

9. Solomon Newman, smith, Milford, Pike County, 
aged 48. 

10. Jonathan Wainwright, Merchant, Philadelphia, 
aged GQ. 

11. Ephraim Fenton, farmer. Upper Dublin postoffice, 
Montgomery County, aged 52. 

12. James Cowden, merchant, Columbia, Lancaster 
County, aged 3(>. 

Average age of jurors: 53. 

In opening for the prosecution District Attorney Ashmead 
defined the act of treason, as it had been laid down in pre- 
vious judicial deliverances, and he relied on the proof that 
there had been an armed and organized resistance to the exe- 
cution of the laws of Congress, in which the prisoner not 
only participated, but of which he was a leader. After he 
had concluded, Z. Collins Lee, of Baltimore, L^nited States 
District Attorney, appeared also for the prosecution. Wit- 



74 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

nesses were excluded while other witnesses were testifying. 
Mr. G. L. Ashmead, who was a cousin of the United States 
Attorney, conducted the examination of the witnesses. The 
scene was located; Deputy Kline told his story in detail, 
substantially as the incident has been related; he insisted 
that he asked Hanway and Lewis to aid him in enforcing 
his writs and they refused; Hanway sat on his horse during 
the affray and Joshua Gorsuch, pretty badly hurt, got be- 
hind the horse for protection. Kline was the special target 
of severe and sarcastic cross-examination by Mr. Stevens, as 
he was the Atlas of the Government's case. To break him 
down on the identity of those who were present at the riot, 
Mr. Stevens insisted on the Court allowing the presence in 
Court of all the prisoners; and when he accomplished this 
dramatic purpose he turned Kline over to Mr. Lewis for 
further and protracted cross-examination on the skirmishing 
movements of the arresting party before the riot. Mr. Read 
also took a hand in his cross-examination, which was not 
concluded until the Saturday of the first week. His last 
answer at this session was to the effect that he did not see 
Joseph Scarlet at the " action." 

Dr. Pearce testified at some length corroborating Kline; 
and averring very distinctly that he saw a shot fired from 
the window of the house at Gorsuch, the elder. He was 
severely cross-examined by Mr. Stevens, who intimated 
repeatedly that the witness had charged Kline with cowardice. 
Dickinson Gorsuch followed him and testified to the main 
facts. J^either he nor his cousin, Joshua, was subjected to 
any cross-examination; and both of them were less direct 
in their accusations against Hanway and Lewis than IQine, 
at the most declaring that Hanway's arrival seemed to give 
the colored men inspiration and encouragement. The son es- 
tablished his father's determination not to be driven or in- 
timidated from the premises, and described the killing of 
him and the wounding of himself. These circumstances, 



" THE TREASON TRIALS." 75 

creditable to the valor of the Gorsuehes, did not materially 
prejudice the case of the defendant on the trial. Dickinson 
recognized Scarlet as one who at first refused to help him, but 
subsequently got him water. Nicholas Hutchins was also 
examined as to the aifray and corroborated the other wit- 
nesses; likewise I^athan ISTelson, the other of the Maryland 
party. These witnesses were positive in their recognition of 
Xoah Buley and Joshua Hammond, the elder two of the 
runaways. 

The first week of the trial closed with Miller Knott on the 
stand. He was a citizen of the neighborhood, who was not 
charged with any complicity, but who had given aid to the 
wounded. He had seen a man on horseback, in his shirt 
sleeves — presumably Hanway — riding northward, with a 
band of negroes following him ; and a half score or more at- 
tacking Dickinson Gorsuch, while others followed Isaiah 
Clarkson into the corn field. He saw Gorsuch the father 
lying alone not yet dead ; and Joseph Scarlet, on horseback, at 
" the mouth of the long lane " ; he subsequently returned with 
the colored men toward Parker's house. From this witness 
it appeared that it was a mile from Hanway's mill to Parker's 
house, that Joseph Scarlet would have to travel two miles 
and his horse was "sweaty," that Elijah Lewis lived from 
a mile and a half to two miles away. Mr. Knott was not 
subjected to cross-examination. His son, John, had preceded 
him to Parker's by ten minutes and saw the riot from a point 
about thirty yards from the junction of the long lane and the 
house lane. He saw from fifty to sixty negroes come out from 
the house, shouting and shooting, disperse up the little lane 
and run toward the creek. He saw horses hitched on the fence 
in the long lane ; he saw Dickinson Gorsuch bleeding and gave 
him water. Again the defense desisted from cross-examina- 
tion of either of the Knotts. Alderman Tfeigart testified to 
an exciting conversation between Kline and Hanway and 
Lewis at Christiana, after their arrest, when Kline had 



76 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



denounced them savagely and they disclaimed having incited 
the negroes. It Avas manifest the defendants would centre 
their attack upon Kline and Mr. Read brought out the fact 
that while he wore formidable whiskers and mustaches at the 
time of the affray, he had since shaved them off. It was 
shown that though he publicly denounced the prisoners 
as "white livered scoundrels" who had ordered the blacks 
to fire, his statements under oath were very much milder. 

A long discussion ensued over the admission of Charles 
Smith's evidence, but he was finally permitted to testify 
that Samuel Williams — the colored man from Philadelphia 
who had trailed Kline — had brought and circulated news 
of the intended raid for the arrest of the Gorsuch runaways. 
It was disclosed by Dr. Cain's testimony that Washington 
and Clark, colored witnesses who had escaped from Moyamen- 
sing, had been circulating a paper on September 10th, which 
had the character of a warning to the Maryland refugees. 
Shortly after the affray Dr. Cain, at his own tenant house, 
treated two colored men, Henry C. Hopkins and John Long, 
who had been shot, one in the arm and one in the thigh. 
Hopkins was the doctor's tenant. John Roberts, a colored 
witness, who had been detained as such, for more than ten 
weeks, in Moyamensing, proved that Joseph Scarlet told 
him " about sun up " that kidnappers were at Parker's, and 
witness got a loaded gun from Jacob Townsend and went 
to the scene. Other witnesses of the same kind, and detained 
the same way, elicited little material matter, as they arrived 
on the scene after the battle. In support of the Government's 
theory of a treasonable conspiracy, some evidence was intro- 
duced of meetings at West Chester in opposition to the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, but the participation of the accused was not 
shown. 

The scenes attending the trial are described by the news- 
papers of the day as highly interesting and sometimes sensa- 
tional. Popular interest grew as it progressed, and it 



" THE TREASON TKIALS." 77 

centered upon the prisoner who was a stranger in Philadel- 
phia. One newspaper account describes Hanway as dis- 
playing the greatest self-possession during the selection of 
jurors. "He is apparently about 35 years of age, tall but 
spare in form, and inclined to stoop a little. There is a 
becoming seriousness in his countenance, but nothing like 
alarm or trepidation is visible. When called upon to look 
at the juror summoned to try him, he does so with a firm 
and inquiring look, but never determines upon his admission 
or rejection until he has consulted his counsel, Thaddeus 
Stevens, who sits immediately by his side." 

Before the defense was formally opened its course and 
character had been anticipated by the cross-examination of 
Mr. Stevens; in this quality of a trial lawyer he was an 
acknowledged master. The opening speech of Mr. Cuyler 
referred to the division among the counsel for the prosecu- 
tion; it praised the fairness of Mr. Ashmead, who, it de- 
clared, had been remanded to the background, because Mary- 
land distrusted the justice of Pennsylvania. This was an 
effective appeal to the State pride of the jury. He vigorously 
assailed Kline, who had been the Government's most zealous 
witness. He traced the course of Pennsylvania's legisla- 
tion on slavery and insisted that this Commonwealth was 
" ever true to her plighted constitutional good faith " ; he 
extolled Hanway's civic virtues, and dwelt with emphasis 
upon the local agitation over the "lawless and diabolical 
outrages " of the kidnappers ; and finally ridiculed the idea 
of treason in the allegation that "three harmless, non-resist- 
ing Quakers, and cight-and-thirty wretched, miserable, pen- 
niless negroes, armed with corn-cutters, clubs, and a few 
muskets, and headed by a miller, in a felt hat, without a 
coat, without arms, and mounted on a sorrel nag, levied 
war against the United States." 

When Mr. Stevens began the production of testimony for 
the defense with offers to prove the recent kidnapping out- 



78 



THE CHKISTIANA KIOT. 



rages in the neighborhood of Gap, the legal storm center of 
the trial was at hand. The prosecution saw and feared the 
influence of this line of evidence as keenly as the defense 
recognized its force and value. Judges Grier and Kane both 
discerned the vital issue at once and long before the argument 
concluded, pointed out that as the accusation was treason — 
a position founded upon some previous conspiracy — the de- 
fense must be allowed the same latitude to disprove intent 
as had been allowed to the prosecution to establish it. This 
opened the way for Thomas Pennington to tell the story 
of what had occurred at the home of his son-in-law, William 
Marsh Chamberlain, the preceding January — it was the 
same night, by the way, that " James Ray fell dead as he en- 
tered the door of his own house." As has been heretofore re- 
lated, in the absence at Ray's of the head of the Chamberlain 
household, the black man in employ was beaten and dragged 
out and carried off by intruders without legal process and 
led by local abettors of the capture. 

The fact that it was not shown the man taken was a free 
man, or that he may have been reclaimed by the authority of 
his owner, made little difference in the popular feeling about 
the affair or in the effectiveness of the incident for trial 
purposes. If such ruthlessness might be technically legal 
it made the slave law none the less odious ! 

Henry Ray went further than Pennington and identi- 
fied both Perry Marsh and William Bear as associates of 
the band who carried off Chamberlain's man ; and Mrs. Cham- 
berlain — who saw the incident through a pipe hole from 
upstairs, where the affrighted family had retreated — and 
her brother, Miller Pennington, described it in a manner 
that heightened its effect. With this recital the defense made 
a distinct advance. 

When the next witness, Elijah Lewis, was called, a ques- 
tion was raised as to his competency. Although not himself 
on trial, he was under indictment for the same offense as 



"the TEEASOlSr TKIALS." 79 

the prisoner. Mr. Brent cited " 5th Espinasse/' but the 
Government's objection was not urged with much confidence 
and was not sustained by the Court. Interest centered in 
the witness as he was probably the most conspicuous of all 
the defendants and a recognized leader of local sentiment. 
He supported the case of the defendants as their counsel had 
outlined it; and his intelligence, direct manner and forceful 
expression gave added weight to his testimony. Isaiah 
Clarkson had summoned him to the scene by the report that 
Parker's house was surrounded and had been broken into 
by kidnappers; he started on foot and called Hanway, who 
was not very well and got his horse ; Kline showed them a 
paper which he assumed was a warrant ; the negroes were ex- 
cited and Hanway begged them not to shoot; witness had 
turned south toward the wood, Kline following and Hanway 
to the north when the shooting began. He contradicted Kline's 
story of him or Hanway expressing defiance of the law 
and declared Kline was '* in the woods " when the firing 
began; he and Hanway were not arrested; they gave them- 
selves up. Cross-examination strengthened his statement. 

Other witnesses testified to EQine's declarations after the 
event to the effect that he had wanted to withdraw, but was 
overruled ; that Dr. Pearce admitted the Gorsuches were 
rash and Kline timid, and that he himself owed his life to 
Hanway's protection. 

The defense then opened its batteries against Kline's repu- 
tation. Hon. William D. Kelly — later a Common Pleas 
Judge and long time a leading member of Congress from 
Philadelphia — headed a long list of witnesses who testified 
that Kline's reputation was bad and that he was unworthy 
of belief. There were nearly a score in all and many of 
them were most emphatic; it was also shovtm that in some 
accounts of the affray Kline had denounced "the damned 
Quaker abolitionists." 

To open the way for the recanting witness, Harvey Scott, 



80 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

to recall his former stories and repudiate their statements, 
witnesses were called to testify that he was not at the riot at 
all, but was '' buttoned up " in John Carr's garret until day- 
light and from that time on was at the place, blowing and 
striking in his employer's blacksmith shop ; that when he 
heard of the affair he congratulated himself with the remark, 
" I'm a nigger out of that scrape." 

Lewis Cooper, who was a son-in-law of Elijah Lewis, had, 
with Joseph Scarlet's assistance, taken Dickinson Gorsuch 
to the Pownall house; he had heard Dr. Pearce tell of his 
uncle's rashness and that one of his own slaves, " a bright 
yellow negro," shot him ; and also that he had been saved by 
holding on to Hanway's saddle skirt. 

Many witnesses were called to prove Hanway's character 
" as a peaceable, good, loyal and orderly citizen." It was 
brought out that Hanway, contrary to the general popular 
impression, was not a member of the Society of Friends. 
Having been bom in Delaware and lived in Chester as well 
as Lancaster County, and having been at one time absent 
from the State, the witnesses in his behalf represented dif- 
ferent sections of the country. 

The rebuttal on the part of the prosecution consisted largely 
of an attempt to rehabilitate Kline's reputation; a great 
number of respectable citizens of Philadelphia, who had 
known him from his youth up, were called to testify that 
his character was good and that he was entitled to belief. 
The opening in rebuttal also covered proposed proof of al- 
leged outrages and reprisals by the sympathizers with fugi- 
tive slaves, in that armed and organized bands of negroes 
paraded the streets of Lancaster " on the hunt for slave hun- 
ters and avowing the determination, if they caught them, 
they would kill them"; that in April, 1851, Samuel Worth- 
ington, of Maryland, went into the neighborhood of Chris- 
tiana to reclaim his fugitive slave and was resisted by armed 
force; that bells were rung and horns blown to arouse the 



"the teeason trials." 81 

neighborhood and the master was obliged to flee for his life. 
It was also promised that Harvey Scott would corroborate his 
former statement and disprove the alibi that had been made 
out for him. In the mimber of witnesses who were called to 
prove the general character of Kline for truth and veracity, 
the Government far exceeded his assailants. The proposed 
testimony as to previous occurrences in the neighborhood, 
showing popular feeling against the resistance to the reclaim- 
ing of fugitive slaves, was ruled out by the Court ; the trial 
judges concurred that if it was any part of the Govern- 
ment's case it should have been offered originally, and Judge 
Grier jocularly observed, "We may draw a figure from the 
game of whist — it would be renigging and keeping your 
trump back to the last trick." 

When the recanting witness, Harvey Scott, was called 
by the Government to prove that the alibi made for him was 
not correct, and Mr. Ashmead confidently offered him to 
prove that he was at the riot, Scott startled the prosecution 
and satisfied the defense by testifying as follows : " I gave 
my evidence that I was there once. I was frightened at 
the time I was taken up, and I said I was there, but I was 
not; I was proved to be there, but I was not there; they 
took me to Christiana, and I was frightened, and I didn't 
know what to say, and I said what they told me." He re- 
peated this, whereupon Mr. Ashmead declared that he had 
been entrapped and asked that Scott might be committed to 
take his trial for perjury, when the following colloquy oc- 
curred : 

"' Judge Grier. Poor devil, it is not worth while for the 
United States to do it. Let him go, and if you owe him 
any thing, pay him, that he may not be tempted to steal. 

"Mr. StevejN^s. The truth is, that he is not right in his 
mind. 

" Mr. J. W. AsiiiiEAD. With that explanation I am per- 
fectly willing he should depart." 
6 



82 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

At the resumption of the trial on the next day there was a 
good deal of discussion as to what should be done about the 
variation in the testimony of the witness Scott. The Gov- 
ernment had manifestly suffered from his wobbling, and 
intimated that he had been tampered with; all of which 
was resented by the defense, who declared that he was only 
a "poor miserable negro," shallow-minded and uncertain, 
and that the United States having fed and clothed him for 
the purpose of the trial, no one representing the defense had 
had any access to him and the whole effect of his testimony 
was a matter for the jury. After again calling Dickinson 
Gorsuch to prove that two of his father's slaves — J^oah 
Buley and Joshua Hammond — were present at the shoot- 
ing, the testimony closed, and it was agreed there should be 
not more than three speeches on either side. 

The summing up began on Friday, December 5, Mr. Lud- 
low opening for the prosecution and discussing at length and 
elaborately the law of the case, and then proceeding to con- 
sider the strength of the Government's testimony and the 
improbabilities of what had been proved on the part of the 
defense. Being himself a member of the Philadelphia bar, 
he undertook the defense of Kline, and declared that no 
man of bad character could have produced in his behalf the 
array of witnesses whom the Government had called to sus- 
tain its deputy marshal. On Saturday morning, December 
6, Mr. Lewis, of West Chester, commenced to sum up for 
the defense. He made an exceptionally able argument both 
on the facts and the law of the case and reviewed the history 
of the two leading cases of treason which had occurred in 
Pennsylvania arising out of the so-called Whiskey Insur- 
rection and the Fries rebellion. He was followed by xVttorney 
General Brent, for the prosecution, and his speech was not 
concluded when Court adjourned on Saturday afternoon to 
meet the following Monday. It was at this session of the 
Court the colored prisoners were brought in clad in the uni- 



"the treason trials." 83 

form dress which had been furnished them by sympathizing 
friends, and the scene that was presented is thus described 
by a contemporary newspaper reporter: 

" On Saturday morning, December 6, when Mr. Lewis was 
to speak first for the prisoners and was to be followed, by the 
Attorney General of Maryland there was a great throng pres- 
ent at the trial. The room was overcrowded with women, and 
Marshal Roberts was greatly embarrassed at his inability 
to find or to make a place for them. The special attention 
of the specators was attracted to a row of colored men, seated 
on the north side of the room. They were cleanly in their 
appearance, and their heads and faces presented strong pre- 
sumptive evidence that they had just escaped from the hands 
of the barber. These were the colored prisoners alleged to 
have been engaged in the treason at Christiana, and numbered 
twenty-four. They were all similarly attired wearing around 
their necks ' red, white and blue scarfs.' Lucretia Mott was 
at their head. This, we believe, is her first appearance in 
court since the trials have commenced. Her dignified and 
benevolent countenance ever attracts attention. Under that 
calm exterior there glows a fire, kindled by charity, which 
is as universal as it is ardent and enduring. She sat knitting 
during the entire session of the court, apparently unconscious 
of what was going on around her, except when some point 
in the testimony seemed to bear strongly against the prisoner. 
Then her eyes were lifted from her work, and sparkled for 
a moment with admiration; but speedily relapsed into their 
intelligent, yet quiet and peaceful aspect. One of the colored 
persons, whose name is Collister Wilson, was too unwell to 
be brought from prison on Saturday morning. It is but just 
to say, that these colored men, taken together, will compare 
in personal appearance with an equal number of the same 
race taken indiscriminately from any part of the world. 
The two white men, Lewis and Scarlet, were also brought 
from prison, but occupied the rear or east end of the court 



84 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

room. These two appeared to be between thirty and forty 
years of age, and judging from their garb, do not belong to the 
Society of Friends, as has been generally supposed. On in- 
quiring how it happened that the colored prisoners were all 
dressed alike, we were informed that they had been clothed 
by a committee of ladies belonging to the Abolition Society, 
who have been very attentive to them since they have been 
in prison." 

Subsequent reports of the trial indicate increased atten- 
dance, especially of " ladies dressed in Quaker garb," 

Continuing his speech on the following Monday the 
Attorney General waxed eloquent over the glories of the 
Union and the perils to national peace that lay in resistance 
to law and in the refusal of any one section to accord to an- 
other its legal rights. He read from Webster's speeches and 
Washington's farewell address and from Judge Iredell's 
charge on the trial of the Fries cases. He referred to the 
presence in Court by Hanway's side of his devoted and af- 
fectionate wife, who it seems had sat with him during the 
trial. While the gallantry of the Maryland lawyer constrained 
him to express his admiration and respect for "the afflicted 
lady of this prisoner," he warned the jury against being con- 
trolled by " the spell of that female influence which is more 
potent than the eloquence of counsel," and contrasted the 
situation of Mrs. Hanway with that of Gorsuch's wife " who, 
as a widow, is now mourning the loss and lover of her youth 
and the prop of her declining years." He played upon the 
color of Scarlet's name; he denounced the coroner's inquest, 
lauded the chivalrous courage of Edward Gorsuch, pictured 
with skillful hands the combat at the Parker house and the 
" diabolical malice " of those who mangled the victim of 
that occasion after they had killed him. He insisted that 
both Lewis and Hanway had been guilty of treason and that 
they had incited the blacks to make armed resistance to the 
law of the land. 



"the treason teials." 85 

To Mr. Eead was assigned the responsible duty of reply- 
ing immediately to Brent, which he did in a speech occupying 
nearly three days in the delivery and, as the reporter ob- 
serves, " marked throughout by eloquence and profound 
learning, being a thorough and complete dissertation on the 
law of treason, and which riveted the attention not only of 
the Court and jury, but of a crowded auditory." 

It was expected that Thaddeus Stevens would follow him, 
and the public interest which attached to his speaking was 
probably greater than that attending any of the other counsel ; 
but for some reason he declined speaking in the cause, and 
Mr. Read was followed by Senator Cooper, who represented 
not only the State of Maryland, but the Gorsuch family. He 
expounded with the ability of a profound lawyer the constitu- 
tional definition of treason and applied it to the facts of the 
case, Avhich he insisted fully, amply and distinctly proved the 
overt act of treason. In the cases of contradiction between 
Lewis and Kline he declared that Kline was supported by 
the testimony of all the Maryland party, while Lewis stood 
alone, and Lewis was an interested and therefore discredited 
witness. His peroration was an earnest plea for the Union 
and against anything that would affect its stability or en- 
danger its peace. In Websterian strain he closed as follows : 
" The eyes of the world are upon the constellation in its ban- 
ner. Its stars are the beacons of liberty. Let us then, for 
our sakes, and for the sake of liberty in other lands, guard 
it as the Ark of the Covenant was guarded of old. Let no 
hand deface it. Let the day never come when it shall be 
rent in twain ; when one cluster of its stars, separated from 
the other and beaming in different banners, shall be borne 
over adverse and conflicting hosts ; but let it remain as it now 
is, 'the Flag of the LTnion,' still waving over the heads of 
united freemen, obedient to the same laws — laws supported 
by all, sustained by all, vindicated by all, in every section of 
the country." 



SQ 



THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 



The argument of the case closed with Senator Cooper's 
speech and he was immediately followed by Justice Grier's 
charge to the jury. After the judge had made a general ex- 
position of the law, he paid a high tribute to the manner in 
which the case had been conducted on both sides by counsel. 
He framed the issues to be determined by the jury as two- 
fold, involving first the question as to whether Hanway par- 
ticipated in the offenses proved to have been committed, and, 
secondly, if he did so, was his offence treason? In under- 
taking to vindicate the reputation of the people of Pennsyl- 
vania he left no doubt as to his own individual views upon 
the subject of the anti-slavery agitation then prevailing, and 
the following extracts from his charge, which were savagely 
resented at the time of their utterance even by those who 
were satisfied with his legal conclusion, are reported to have 
been uttered in a shrill and piping voice, which added to the 
intensity of their expression : 

" With the exception of a few individuals of perverted in- 
tellect, some small districts or neighborhoods whose moral 
atmosphere has been tainted and poisoned, by male and fe- 
male vagrant lecturers and conventions, no party in politics, 
no sect of religion, nor any respectable numbers or character 
can be found within our borders who have viewed with ap- 
probation or looked with any other than feelings of abhorrence 
upon this disgraceful tragedy. 

" It is not in this Hall of Independence, that meetings of 
infuriated fanatics and unprincipled demagogues have been 
held to counsel a bloody resistance to the laws of the land. 
It is not in this city that conventions are held denouncing 
the Constitution, the laws, and the Bible. It is not here 
that the pulpit has been desecrated by seditious exhortations, 
teaching that theft is meritorious, murder excusable and 
treason a virtue. 

" The guilt of this foul murder rests not alone on the 
deluded individuals who were its immediate perpetrators, but 



"the treason trials." 87 

the blood taints with even deeper dye the skirts of those who 
promulgated doctrines subversive of all morality and all 
government." 

He practically disposed, however, of the whole case and 
took its further consideration from the jury by his announced 
legal conclusion that the offense did not arise to that of 
treason. His summing up on this branch of the subject prac- 
tically concluded all of the cases. It was as follows: 

" Without desiring to invade the prerogatives of the jury 
in judging the facts of this case, the Court feel bound to say, 
that they do not think the transaction with which the prisoner 
is charged with being connected, rises to the dignity of 
treason or levying war. Not because the numbers or force 
was insufficient. But 1st, For want of any proof of previous 
conspiracy to make a general and public resistance to any 
laio of the United States. 2ndly, Because there is no evi- 
dence that any person concerned in the transaction knew there 
were such acts of Congress, as those with which they were 
charged with conspiring to resist by force and arms, or had 
any other intention than to protect one another from what 
they termed kidnappers (by which slang term they probably 
included not only actual kidnappers, but all masters and 
owners seeking to recapture their slaves, and the officers and 
agents assisting therein). 

" The testimony of the prosecution shows that notice had 
been given that certain fugitives were pursued; the riot, 
insurrection, tumult, or whatever you may call it, was but a 
sudden ^ conclamatio ' or running together, to prevent the 
capture of certain of their friends or companions, or to res- 
cue them if arrested. Previous to this transaction, so far 
as we are informed, no attempt had been made to arrest 
fugitives in the neighborhood under the new act of Congress 
by a public officer. Heretofore arrests had been made by 
the owner in person, or his agent properly authorized, or by 
an officer of the law. Individuals without any authority, but 



88 



THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 



incited by cupidity, and the hope of obtaining the reward 
offered for the return of a fugitive, had heretofore under- 
taken to seize them by force and violence, to invade the 
sanctity of private dwellings at night, and insult the feelings 
and prejudices of the people. It is not to be wondered at 
that a people subject to such inroads, should consider odious 
the perpetrators of such deeds and denominate them kid- 
nappers — and that the subjects of this treatment should 
have been encouraged in resisting such aggressions, where 
the rightful claimant could not be distinguished from the 
odious kidnapper, or the fact be ascertained whether the 
person seized, deported or stolen in this manner, was a free 
man or a slave. But the existence of such feelings is no 
evidence of a determination or conspiracy by the people to 
publicly resist any legislation of Congress, or levy war 
against the United States. That in consequence of such 
excitement, such an outrage should have been committed, is 
deeply to be deplored. That the persons engaged in it are 
gTiilty of aggravated riot and murder cannot be denied. But 
riot and murder are offences against the State Government. 
It would be a dangerous precedent for the Court and jury 
in this case to extend the crime of treason by construction to 
doubtful cases." 

Having thus practically disposed of the case Mr. Justice 
Grier praised the U. S. Attorney and the counsel for 
Maryland for their zeal and ability, and intimated that the 
duty of punishing "the perpetrators of this outrage" might 
be transferred to the courts of Lancaster County, where the 
activity and zeal of its law officers gave assurance that their 
duty would be performed with all fidelity. 

After the Judge's charge the jury retired to deliberate at 
the American House where they were lodged. They re- 
turned in fifteen minutes and rendered a verdict of "j^ot 
Guilty," which announcement was received by the large 
audience present " in a becoming manner " ; the propriety of 



"the teeason tkials." 89 

their conduct is ascribed to the fact that the Judge's charge 
forecast the verdict. 

John M. Read afterwards said some of the jurymen in- 
formed him they were ready to acquit before the defense 
opened. 

On motion of District Attorney Ashmead, and in con- 
sideration of the ordeal through which Castner Hanway had 
just passed, four other bills against him for misdemeanor were 
non prossed and he was discharged from custody and from all 
further prosecution in the Federal Courts. The charge of 
treason against Elijah Lewis was withdrawn, and he and 
Samuel Williams were admitted to bail in $2,000 on four 
other indictments pending against them. Hanway and Lewis 
were brought to Lancaster on Friday afternoon, December 
12th, and held by Associate Judge Vondersmith in $1,000 
bail each, " to answer any charge that might be brought 
against them." 

There was a later proceeding in which all the other bills 
for treason were non prossed ; and the proposed transfer of 
the prisoners to Lancaster County was announced by the 
District Attorney. Mr. Read brought to the attention of 
the Court the subject of the United States paying the ex- 
penses of the Hanway witnesses ; for which there was a prece- 
dent in Aaron Burr's case. The subject was fully argued 
December 19th; and Judge Kane filed an opinion refusing 
to tax these costs against the Government and dismissing 
Hanway's petition. 

Subsequently a petition to Congress, of which the following 
is a copy, was circulated and signed by the defendants, but it 
availed nothing : 

"TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF 
THE UNITED STATES: 
"The Petition of 

Citizens of the State of Penna., respectfully repre- 
sents; That Whereas in the month of September 1851 a Riot occurred in 
the vicinity of the residence of your petitioners, generally known as the 



90 THE CHKISTIANA KIOT. 

* Christiana Eiot, ' and your petitioners repairing to the scene of dis- 
turbance without any evil intentions, but to prevent violence, were 
arrested by persons acting for the United States, and charged with the 
highest crimes known to our Laws, and thrown into prison, where they 
were detained many months and subjected to great expense in making 
preparations to meet those charges, whereby their estates were wasted, 
their minds harassed to the verge of insanity, and their health impaired, 
till premature decrepitude is the consequence, after which they were 
discharged without a hearing, thereby tacitly admitting the charges were 
groundless, having incurred an expense of many thousand dollars. 

"Your petitioners therefore pray you the honorable representatives 
of the most magnanimous nation of the earth, to grant us some relief 
from our embarrassments, and we will ever pray, etc. ' ' 

Thus ended the Treason Trials of 1851. 



CHAPTER XI. 

The Latee Tkials. 

Legal Proceedings in Lancaster County — Prisoners Remanded to Local 
Jurisdiction — President PiUmore 's Message — Attorney General 
Brent 's Eeport — Final Disposition of the Cases in the Lancaster 
County Court — • ' ' Sam ' ' Williams Tried in Philadelphia and 
Acquitted. 

There was, however, a very considerable political and 
legal aftermath to the proceedings at Philadelphia. The 
intimation of so eminent an authority as a justice of the 
Supreme Court of the United States to the effect that some 
official duty devolved upon the Lancaster County authorities 
could not be ignored. Accordingly District Attorney John 
L. Thompson, who was in his day one of the leaders of the 
Lancaster County Bar, framed bills of indictment to the 
January Sessions 1852 against many of those who had been 
arraigned for treason in Philadelphia. On Wednesday, 
December 31, Marshal Roberts brought to the Lancaster 
County prison from Philadelphia the following persons: 
Alson Pernsley, Lewis Gales, Lewis Clarkson, Charles Hun- 
ter, ]Srelson Carter, Thomas Butler, Henry Green, Collister 
Wilson and George Williams, — all these were on the same 
evening discharged by the District Attorney, as he deemed 
the evidence insufficient to warrant their detention. 

On the same evening George Williams was arrested as a 
fugitive slave and taken to Penningtonville, where he took 
advantage of the sleepiness of his captors and walked off, and 
" straight was seen no more," to the great chagrin of Henry 
H. Kline, the officer who made the arrest, and of the owner 
of the slave, who was asleep on the floor. 

Saturday, January 3, 1852, Marshal Roberts brought to 

91 



92 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

Lancaster as prisoners John Morgan, Jacob Moore, Ezekiel 
Thompson, Isaiah Clarkson, John Williams, John Jackson, 
Benjamin Johnson, George Read, Daniel Causeberrj, Ben- 
jamin Pendergrass, William Williams, John Holliday, Wil- 
liam Brown, Elijah Clark, William Brown, Jr., and Henry 
Sims, as prisoners, and five colored persons as witnesses. The 
witnesses were discharged on their recognizance to appear at 
Court to testify. 

Public and political interest in the Eiot and the Trials 
was not allowed to flag from inattention to the issues they 
involved by those high in authority. From "the seats of 
the mighty" deliverances were heard against .what was in- 
terpreted in some quarters as successful offensive resistance 
to law. In his early message to Congress in December, 1851, 
President Fillmore had these paragraphs, relating to the 
events at Christiana. 

"It is deeply to be regretted that in several instances 
officers of the Government, in attempting to execute the law 
for the return of fugitives from labor, have been openly re- 
sisted and their efforts frustrated and defeated by lawless and 
violent mobs : that in one case such resistance resulted in the 
death of an estimable citizen, and in others serious injury 
ensued to those officers and to individuals who were using 
their endeavors to sustain the laws. Prosecutions have been 
instituted against the alleged offenders so far as they could 
be identified, and are still pending. I have regarded it as my 
duty in these cases to give all aid legally in my power to the 
enforcement of the laws, and I shall continue to do so wher- 
ever and whenever their execution may be resisted." 

" Some objections have been urged against the details of 
the act for the return of fugitives from labor, but it is worthy 
of remark that the main opposition is aimed against the 
Constitution itself, and proceeds from persons and classes of 
persons many of whom declare their wish to see that Consti- 
tution overturned. They avow their hostility to any law 



THE LATEE TRIALS. 93 

which shall give full and practical effect to this requirement 
of the Constitution. Fortunately the number of these per- 
sons is comparatively small, and is believed to be daily dimin- 
ishing; but the issue which they present is one which 
involves the supremacy and even the existence of the 
Constitution." 

At an anti-slavery meeting, in Philadelphia, held on De- 
cember 18, 1851, Joshua R. Giddings and Lucretia Mott were 
speakers. The large audience grew tumultuously enthusi- 
astic over the presentation on the platform of Castner Han- 
way and Elijah Lewis. 

After the trial William H. Seward sent the following 
Christmas greeting to District Attorney Ashmead, whose 
son, Henry G. Ashmead, historian of Delaware County and 
resident of Chester, cherishes the manuscript ; Mr. Seward 
was then in his first term as ITnited States Senator, but had 
already distinguished himself as an anti-slavery leader: 

Washington December 25, 1857 
My Bear Sir, 

I thank you for the kind remembrance manifested by you sending me 
a copy of your opening Argument on the late Trial for Treason. "While 
I cannot but rejoice in the result of that trial as a new assurance of the 
security of Popular Liberty, I am not unable to appreciate the ability 
with which you have maintained the untenable position which the Govern- 
ment was made to assume. The argument is highly logical and eloquent, 
and I cannot better manifest my good wishes for you and for the Country 
than by expressing a hope that it may be the good fortune of the cause 
of truth and justice hereafter to enlist you on their side. 

I am, my dear Sir, 
Very respectfully & truly 

Your friend, 
William H. Seward. 
John W. Ashmead Esq., 

District Attorney of the United States 
Philadelphia. 

In his message to the General Assembly of Maryland at the 
following January Session, Governor Lowe referred at length 



94 



THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 



to the Gorsiich tragedy. Despite the assurances of the Federal 
administration through Secretary of State Daniel Webster, 
that all the energies of the law would be exerted to bring 
the offenders to justice, Maryland had felt constrained to 
actively participate in the prosecution. " The blood of a 
Marylander," he declared, " cried out from the earth ; whilst 
the Genius of the Union called aloud for a vindication of 
outraged laws." Otherwise "the flame of excitement would 
spread from the hills of Maryland to the savannahs of the 
extreme South, until every Southern State would unite in 
one common feeling of horror and indignation." Senator 
Cooper had been retained by him ; and despite the high ability 
and signal service of both him and Maryland's Attorney Gen- 
eral, there had been a gross miscarriage of justice. With a 
fervor of rhetoric that was more common then in State papers 
than it is now, he declared : " Shall domestic feuds destroy 
our power, when the eyes of all nations are turned to the 
star of our empire, as the harbinger of their deliverance ? 
Shall Kossuth blast Hungary with the breath of our discord ? 
Shall O'Brien, in his lonely exile, see the hope of Ireland 
pass down the horizon, with the western sun ? May so in- 
calculable a calamity be spared to the nations of the earth. 
And yet, when American blood is made to flow upon 
American soil, as a grateful libation to American fanaticism ; 
when whole communities stand listlessly by, and a prosti- 
tuted press and venal politicians are found, in the open day, 
to glory in the human sacrifice ; when the Law proclaims 
its own weakness from the Bench, and Treason stalks un- 
punished, through the halls of justice; the l^ations can judge 
of the probable remoteness of that calamity." 

The official report of his Attorney General justified the 
Governor in becoming somewhat heated over the outcome at 
Philadelphia. Mr. Brent had suffered not only some per- 
sonal irritation over his position there, but a keen profes- 
sional disappointment in his failure to convict. The blame 



THE LATER TKIALS. 95 

for this he distributed very generally among the people of the 
jSTorth who sympathized with resistance to the Fugitive Slave 
Law; the partisan character of the jury panel; the partiality 
of the daily press reports; the sympathy of the spectators; 
the treachery of the j^rison officials ; the bribery of Scott, the 
government's witnesses ; and egregious errors of law com- 
mitted by Judge Grier. Even the amiable Marshal did not 
escape criticism, as evinced by this paragraph: 

" I brought to the attention of the court, the fact stated 
in the ' Pennsylvania Freeman/ that the Marshal (Mr. 
Roberts) had actually dined with the prisoners, or some of 
them, during the trial, on Thanksgiving day, and when I was 
about to read the article from the paper I was stopped by his 
Honor, Judge Grier, who in behalf of the Marshal, denied the 
truth of the statement that he had so dined ; but unfortunately 
for the Judge's interposition, the Marshal immediately after- 
wards made his own explanation, and admitted that he had 
not only assisted at the dinner, ^but had set down and par- 
taken sparingly' of the Thanksgiving dinner, with the white 
prisoners. I cannot but consider such conduct as highly un- 
becoming that officer from whom, next to the Judge, we had 
a right to expect impartiality and a due regard for decorum." 

It is only fair to all concerned to say that the Attorney 
General's indignation was not taken very seriously. Attorney 
Jackson's history of the case corrects some of his exaggera- 
tions, and especially points out that all of Mr. Brent's col- 
leagues exculpated Marshal Roberts from any misconduct. 
Judge Kane's own son, was known to have extended various 
kindnesses and courtesies to the prisoners. 

Mr. Brent's complaint on this score seems almost ridiculous 
when one reads the full particulars of the affair, as published 
in the Philadelphia Freeman of December 4, 1851. That 
newspaper says : 

" It affords us great pleasure to state, that the Christiana 
prisoners were not wholly forgotten on Thursday last in the 



96 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

distribution of the good things pertaining to Thanksgiving. 
Thomas L. Kane, Esq. (son of the Judge), sent to the prison 
for their use six superior turkeys, two of them extra size, 
together with a pound cake, weighing 16 pounds. The tur- 
keys were cooked with appropriate fixings, by order of Mr. 
Freed, the Superintendent, in the prison kitchen, by a female 
prisoner detached for the purpose. The dinner for the white 
prisoners, Messrs. Hanway, Lewis and Scarlet, was served in 
appropriate style in the room of Mr. Morrison, one of the 
keepers. The U. S. Marshal, A. E. Eoberts, Esq., several of 
the keepers and Mr. Hawes, one of the prison officers, dined 
with the prisoners as their guests. Mayor Gilpin coming in, 
accepted an invitation to test the quality of the pound cake, 
Mrs. Martha Hanway who has the honor to be the wife of the 
'traitor' of that name, and who has spent most of her time 
with her husband since his incarceration, served each of the 
27 colored ' traitors ' with a plate of turkey, potatoes, pound 
cake, &c., and the supply not being exhausted, all the prisoners 
on the same corridor were similarly supplied. 

" Who will stand best with posterity — the father who prosti- 
tutes his powers as a judge to procure the conviction of peace- 
able citizens as traitors for refusing to aid in the capture of 
fugitive slaves, or the son who ministered to the wants of those 
citizens while incarcerated in a loathsome prison ? ISTeed we 
answer the question ? " 

The Maryland witnesses do not appear to have had as 
cheery a Thanksgiving as the prisoners. Dickinson Gorsuch's 
diary had this entry: 

"Thursday, Nov. 27. "Thanksgiving Day. This has been a great 
holiday here; there was no court today. We went to Mr. Ashmead's 
office and stayed awhile. John Bacon went home after the clothes I wore 
when I was shot. ' ' 

During their imprisonment the colored people and their 
families were largely supported by outside friends and 
sympathizers ; and many an item such as this, recorded in the 



THE LATER TRIALS. 97 

cash book of B. L. Wood (father of Mrs. David W. Jackson), 
is set down to the credit of sympathetic friends: 

lOth mo. 8, 1851. Dr. 1 pair of pants and 1 shirt given to Elijah Clark 
in Moyamensing; also sent his wife qr. middlings. 

In another respect the official complaints of Maryland's 
Governor and Attorney General against Pennsylvania justice 
call for correction at even this late day. Both aver that " the 
murder" of Kennedy, a slave owner, at Carlisle, killed in 
resistance of the fugitive slave law, went utterly unpunished : 
The facts are that in that offense the rioters and rescuers 
were led by John Clellans and he and thirty-six others were 
indicted. Besides Clellans twelve of the accused were con- 
victed of riot and of riotously rescuing fugitive slaves from 
the lawful custody of their owners. Judge Hepburn sen- 
tenced them to solitary confinement at labor in the Eastern 
Penitentiary for three years. Charles Gibbons represented 
them on an appeal to the Supreme Court ; and Deputy At- 
torney General (District Attorney) Bonham for the Com- 
monwealth, argued before that tribunal that Pennsylvania 
followed the law of England, which upon conviction for riot 
authorized fine, imprisonment and the pillory, and therefore 
sentence to the penitentiary was lawful. Justice Burnside 
delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, declared "it 
was an aggravated case of riot " ; but that as Pennsylvania 
had adopted the English common law, the imprisonment must 
be in the county jail, and the final judgment of the court was 
that as the prisoners had been confined in the Eastern Peni- 
tentiary about three-fourths of a year, "we deem this as 
severe a punishment as if they had been confined in the county 
jail, where they legitimately should have been sent, for two 
years." (Clellans vs. Com. 8 Barr. 223.) 

Meantime the friends of Hanway, Lewis and others, in- 
censed at the continued prosecutions in Lancaster county, 
assumed the aggressive. 
7 



98 THE CHEISTIANA RIOT. 

They procured the indictment to the January Sessions, 
1852, ISTo. 38, in Lancaster County, of Deputy Marshal 
Henry H. Kline, for perjury. It was laid in this indictment 
that he had sworn falsely at the hearing before Alderman 
Reigart, wherein he averred that he had shown his warrant 
to Hanway, asked him and Lewis to spare his men, that they 
defied the warrant and encouraged the rioters and in various 
other particulars. Upon this bill of indictment appeared the 
names of a large number of witnesses, and Kline was held 
in $1,000 bail before Charles G. Freeman, alderman of Phila- 
delphia, to answer at the Lancaster Court. 

It appears from the subsequent history of the case that all 
parties involved were by this time willing to have " somebody 
help them to let go"; and accordingly at the January Ses- 
sions, Joseph McClure, of Bart township, being foreman of 
the jury, this bill against Kline for perjury, being No. 38, 
was ignored, and also the following, indictments all to the 
same sessions and for Riot: No. 57, William Brown; No. 58, 
Wm. Williams; No. 59, Henry Green; No. 60, William 
Brown, Jr.; No. 61, Benjamin Johnson; No. 63, Daniel 
Caulsberry ; No. 64, George Wells ; No. 65, George Williams ; 
No. 66, Alson Pernsley; No. 67, Lewis Gales; No. 68, 
Lewis Clarkson; No. 69, Chas. Hunter; No. 70, Nelson 
Carter ; No. 71, Jacob Woods, a brother of Peter Woods ; No. 
72, Peter Woods; No. 73, Israel Clarkson; No. 74, John 
Williams; No. 75, John Jackson; No. 76, Castner Hanway; 
No. 77, Elijah Lewis; No. 78, John Morgan; No. 81, Ben- 
jamin Pendergrass; No. 82, John Halliday; No. 83, Thomas 
Butler; No. 84, Elijah Clark; No. 85, Collister Wilson. 

With this termination of the cases in the local courts all 
prosecutions were finally ended except that of Samuel Wil- 
liams, in the United States District Court at Philadelphia. 
He was there charged with interfering with the execution of 
warrants for the arrest of Noah Buley and Joshua Ham- 
mond, runaway slaves. His case was first called for trial on 



THE LATER TRIALS. 99 

January 5, and continued until January 12. Mr. Ashmead 
and Messrs. Ludlow appeared for the prosecution, and R. P. 
Kane, W. S. Pierce and David Paul Brown for the defense. 
The following jury was empanelled to try his case; the last 
name on the list will be recognized as that of an estimable 
citizen of Lancaster County : 

Pratt Roberts, Chester County; Thomas Vaughan, Phila- 
delphia; Henry McMahen, Philadelphia; Patrick McBride, 
Philadelphia ; Michael Keenan, Philadelphia ; Fredk. Boley, 
Sr., Philadelphia ; Joseph Dowden, Chester County ; Samuel 
Culp, Germantown; Minshall Painter, Delaware County; 
Joseph Thornton, Philadelphia; Francis Parker, Chester 
County ; Peter McConomy, Lancaster. 

Kline was the principal witness on this trial, and his testi- 
mony was practically a repetition of what he had sworn to in 
the Hanway case. The trial judge fell ill during the progress 
of the case and it was continued the third time and resumed 
on February 2, argued to the jury on February 3, and, on 
February 4, a verdict of " not guilty " was rendered. 

This closes the record of all judicial proceedings arising 
out of the Christiana Riot. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

Parker's Own Story. 

The Leader of the Defenders Tells his Story of what Occurred at "the 
Eiot ' ' — The Author Gives Seasons why He takes the Narrative with 
Some Allowance — A Valuable Historical Contribution. 

I deem it entirely fair and proper at this stage of the 
narrative to republish entire William Parker's own account 
of what took place at his house during "the Riot." It is 
reproduced in the assurance that each reader may — as he, 
and especially she, will — give it such credibility as the 
circumstances may command for it. It is fit that it be pre- 
sented with certain qualifications to the general reader and to 
the increasing number who may peruse this history in the 
spirit in which it is written, viz., one of purely historic 
inquiry. 

The Atlantic Monthly (Boston), for February, 1866, 
published the first part of what is entitled " The Freedman's 
Story," introduced by one who signed himself " E. K.," and 
said he was asked to revise it for publication " or weave its 
facts into a story which would show the fitness of the 
Southern black for the right of suffrage." The editor evades 
the natural inquiry whether the text is wholly Parker's or 
partially his own; but it is printed as that of a freedman 
or ex-slave and as evidence " of the manhood of his race to 
that impartial grand-jury, the American people." 

Of course it cannot be unreservedly accepted for the pur- 
pose for which it was offered, that is : to prove the fitness of 
the Southern freedman for suffrage ; for it is not the narra- 
tive of a man who was suddenly freed and enfranchised by 
the circumstances of war, but of one who became a fugitive 
slave many years earlier and had the advantage of ISTorthern 
life and Canadian experience in the intei'\'ening period. 

100 



pakker's own story. 101 

But it is of very decided value to this attempted impartial 
and impersonal history, because it purports to tell the story 
of the Riot as the man most responsible for it and most con- 
spicuous in it saw and heard its incidents; and, because he 
never had an opportunity to tell it under the restraints of a 
judicial examination or the obligations of an oath. It must 
be taken as his voluntary testimony, when he had no hopes 
of reward or fear of punishment to incite or restrain him. 

The earlier part of his life's story has been already ab- 
stracted, so far as it has any importance to this history. It 
leaves no room for doubt that he was a heroic and a desperate 
man; that he was instigated by ideas of personal liberty for 
himself and others, without regard to law; and that both 
offensively and defensively he was "enlisted for the war" 
to the death against all and every attempt to execute the 
Fugitive Slave Law. 

Whether he is accurate in his statement of what occurred 
on the day of "the Riot," each reader must determine for 
himself or herself. For myself, individually, I doubt the 
literal truth of parts of his narration, while I concede that 
in the main it is true and it certainly throws more illumina- 
tion on the actual occurrences than the testimony of any 
other single witness. 

I detect a note of braggadocio through all Parker's nar- 
rative, which slightly discounts its truthfulness. His defi- 
ance of " all United States " ; his admitted attempts to de- 
ceive Gorsuch as to the presence of his slaves on the premises ; 
and his avowed purpose to shoot Gorsuch influence my judg- 
ment. Such considerations might not have weight with those 
who believe a man may be a good citizen who violates and 
defies a bad law. The literary style of "The Freedman's 
Story" leaves little room for doubt that his manuscript was 
edited by some one with a purpose other than strictly 
historical. 

On the other hand, no other person was in so favorable a 



102 



THE CHKISTIANA EIOT. 



position as Parker to tell the actual story of the Eiot, if he 
saw fit to do so, and when this version was published Parker 
had nothing to gain or lose from telling the truth, but the 
zeal of his editor to exalt " the f reedman " may have tinc- 
tured the story. That he could remember its details so ex- 
actly as to verbally reproduce the many conversations in the 
Atlantic fifteen years later, is more than doubtful — it is 
impossible ; and his j)retense to do so discounts the attempt. 
In many respects the narration accords with the testimony 
of other eye-witnesses and it is not out of harmony in the 
main with the evidence produced on the trial. While it 
ascribes language to Mr. Gorsuch that likely he did not use, 
and may put into his hands weapons that he did not carry, 
Parker's story certainly gives the Gorsuches, father and son, 
due credit for valor ; and it makes some of their allies scarcely 
more timid than the trial disclosed them to have been. 

Howbeit, the story told by Parker is an essential part of 
the history of the case and it is here reprinted out of fair- 
ness to all parties so far as it relates to the Riot and events 
immediately preceding it. 

William Pakker's Story. 

The Atlantic Monthly article. Part II, March, 1866, to 
which attention has been given, presupposes a previous ac- 
count of Parker's early life, the escape of the Gorsuch slaves, 
the warrants for their re-capture, the departure of Deputy 
Marshal Kline to execute them and " Sam Williams's " mis- 
sion to Lancaster County to warn them and their friends of 
the impending raid upon them, substantially as they have 
been told already. Parker then proceeds: 

The information brought by Mr. Williams spread through 
the vicinity like a fire in the prairies; and when I went 
home from my work in the evening, I found Pinckney (whom 
I should have said before was my brother-in-law), Abra- 
ham Johnson, Samuel Thompson and Joshua Kite at my 



PARKEK S OWN STORY, 



103 



house, all of them excited about the rumor. I laughed at 
them, and said it was all talk. This was the 10th of Sep- 
tember, 1851. They stopped for the night with us, and we 
went to bed as usual. Before daylight, Joshua Kite rose, 
and started for his home. Directly, he ran back to the 
house, burst open the door, crying, "O William! kidnap- 
pers ! kidnappers !" 

He said that, when he was just beyond the yard, two men 
crossed before him, as if to stop him, and others came up on 
either side. As he said this, they had reached the door. 
Joshua ran up stairs (we slept up stairs), and they fol- 
lowed him ; but I met them at the landing, and asked, " Who 
are you ? " 

The leader, Kline, replied, "I am the United States 
Marshal." 

I then told him to take another step and I would break his 
neck. 

He again said, " I am the United States Marshal," 

I told him I did not care for him nor the United States. 
At that he turned and went down stairs, 

Pinckney said, as he turned to go down, — "Where is the 
use in fighting? They will take us," 

Kline heard him, and said, " Yes, give up, for we can and 
will take you anyhow." 

I told them all not to be afraid, nor to give up to any 
slaveholder, but to fight until death, 

" Yes," said Kline, " I have heard many a negro talk as 
big as you, and then have taken him ; and I'll take you," 

" You have not taken me yet," I replied ; " and if you 
undertake it you will have your name recorded in history for 
this day's work." 

Mr. Gorsuch then spoke, and said, — "Come, Mr. Kline, 
let's go up stairs and take them. We can take them. Come, 
follow me. I'll go up and get my property. What's in the 



104 



THE CHKISTIANA EIOT. 



way? The law is in my favor, and the people are in my 
favor." 

At that he began to ascend the stair ; but I said to him, — 
" See here, old man, you can come up, but you can't go down 
again. Once up here, you are mine." 

Kline then said — " Stop, Mr. Gorsuch. I will read the 
warrant, and then, I think, they will give up." 

He then read the warrant, and said, — " IsTow, you see, we 
are commanded to take you, dead or alive; so you may as 
well give up at once." 

" Go up, Mr. Kline," then said Gorsuch, " you are the 
Marshal." 

Kline started, and when a little way up said, "I am 
coming." 

I said, " Well, come on." 

But he was too cowardly to show his face. He went down 
again and said, — " You had better give up without any more 
fuss, for we are bound to take you anyhow. I told you before 
that I was the United States Marshal, yet you will not give 
up. I'll not trouble the slaves. I will take you and make you 
pay for all." 

"Well," I answered, "take me and make me pay for all. 
I'll pay for all." 

Mr. Gorsuch then said, " You have my property." 

To which I replied, — " Go in the room down there, and 
see if there is anything there belonging to you. There are 
beds and a bureau, chairs, and other things. Then go out to 
the barn; there you will find a cow and some hogs. See if 
any of them are yours." 

He said, — " They are not mine ; I want my men. They 
are here, and I am bound to have them." 

Thus we parleyed for a time, all because of the pusilla- 
nimity of the Marshal, when he, at last, said, — "I am tired 
waiting on you ; I see you are not going to give up. Go to the 



paeker's own stoky. 105 

barn and fetch some straw," said he to one of his men. "I 
will set the house on fire, and burn them up." 

" Burn us up and welcome," said I. " None but a coward 
would saj the like. You can burn us, but you can't take us ; 
before I give up, you will see my ashes scattered on the earth." 

By this time day had begun to dawn; and then my wife 
came to me and asked if she should blow the horn, to bring 
friends to our assistance. I assented, and she went to the 
garret for the purpose. When the horn sounded from the 
garret window, one of the ruffians asked the others what it 
meant ; and Kline said to me, " What do you mean by blow- 
ing that horn ? " 

I did not answer. It was a custom with us, when a horn 
was blown at an unusual hour, to proceed to the spot promptly 
to see what was the matter. Kline ordered his men to shoot 
any one they saw blowing the horn. There was a peach-tree 
at that end of the house. Up it two of the men climbed ; and 
when my wife went a second time to the window, they fired 
as soon as they heard the blast, but missed their aim. My 
wife then went down on her knees, and, drawing her head and 
body below the range of the window, the horn resting on the 
sill, blew blast after blast, while the shots poured thick and 
fast around her. They must have fired ten or twelve times. 
The house was of stone, and the windows were deep, which 
alone preserved her life. 

They were evidently disconcerted by the blowing of the 
horn. Gorsuch said again, " I want my property, and I will 
have it." 

" Old man," said I, " you look as if you belonged to some 
persuasion." 

"ISTever mind," he answered, ^'what persuasion I belong 
to; I want my property." 

While I was leaning out of the window. Kline fired a pistol 
at me, but the shot went too high; the ball broke the glass 
just above my head. I was talking to Gorsuch at the time. 



106 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

I seized a gim and aimed it at Gorsuch's breast, for he evi- 
dently had instigated Kline to fire; but Pinckney caught my 
arm and said, " Don't shoot." The gun went off, just grazing 
Gorsuch's shoulder. Another conversation then ensued be- 
tween Gorsuch, Kline, and myself, when another one of the 
party fired at me but missed. Dickinson Gorsuch, I then 
saw, was preparing to shoot ; and I told him if he missed, I 
would show him where shooting first came from. 

I asked them to consider what they would have done, had 
they been in our position. " I know you want to kill us," I 
said, " for you have shot at us time and again. We have only 
fired twice, although we have guns and ammunition, and 
could kill you all if we would, but we do not want to shed 
blood." 

" If you do not shoot any more," then said Kline, " I will 
stop my men from firing." 

They then ceased for a time. This was about sunrise. 

Mr. Gorsuch now said, — " Give up and let me have my 
property. Hear what the Marshal says ; the Marshal is your 
friend. He advises you to give up without more fuss, for my 
property I will have." 

I denied that I had his property when he replied, "You 
have my men." 

" Am I • your man ? " I asked. 

"N'o." 

I then called Pinckney forward. 

"Is that your man?" 

"No." 

Abraham Johnson I called next, but Gorsuch said he was 
not his man. 

The only plan left was to call both Pinckney and Johnson 
again; for had I called the others, he would have recognized 
them, for they were his slaves. 

Abraham Johnson said, "Does such a shrivelled up old 



PAEKER S OWN STOEY, 



107 



slaveholder as you own such a nice, genteel young man as 
I am?" 

At this Gorsuch took offence, and charged me with dictat- 
ing his language. I then told him there were but five of us, 
which he denied, and still insisted that I had his property. 
One of the party then attacked the Abolitionists, affirming 
that, although they declared there could not be property in 
man, the Bible was conclusive authority in favor of property 
in human flesh. 

" Yes," said Gorsuch, " does not the Bible say, ' Servants, 
obey your masters ' ? " 

I said that it did, but the same Bible said, " Give unto 
your servants that which is just and equal." 

At this stage of the proceedings, we went into a mutual 
Scripture inquiry, and bandied views in the manner of gar- 
rulous old wives. 

When I spoke of duty to servants, Gorsuch said, " Do you 
know that ? " 

" Where," I asked, " do you see it in Scripture that a man 
should traffic in his brother's blood?" 

" Do you call a nigger my brother ? " said Gorsuch. 

"Yes," said I. 

" William," said Samuel Thompson, " he has been a class- 
leader." 

When Gorsuch heard that, he hung his head, but said noth- 
ing. We then all joined in singing, — 

"Leader, what do you say- 
About the judgment day? 

I will die on the field of battle, 

Die on the field of battle, 
"With glory in my soul. ' ' 

Then we all began to shout, singing meantime, and 
shouted for a long while. Gorsuch, who was standing head 
bowed, said "What are you doing now?" 

Samuel Thompson replied, "Preaching a sinner's funeral 
sermon." 



108 THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 

" You had better give up, and come down." 

I then said to Gorsuch, — " ' If a brother see a sword com- 
ing, and he warn not his brother, then the brother's blood 
is required at his hands; but if the brother see the sword 
coming, and warn his brother, and his brother flee not, then 
his brother's blood is required at his own hand.' I see the 
sword coming, and, old man, I warn you to flee; if you flee 
not, your blood be upon your own hand." 

It was now about seven o'clock. 

" You had better give up," said old Mr. Gorsuch, after 
another while, " and come down, for I have come a long way 
this morning, and want my breakfast ; for my property I will 
have, or I'll breakfast in hell, I will go up and get it." 

He then started up stairs, and came far enough to see 
us all plainly. We were just about to fire upon him, when 
Dickinson Gorsuch, who was standing on the old oven, before 
the door, and could see into the up-stairs room through the 
window, jumped down and caught his father, saying, — "O 
father, do come down! do come down! They have guns, 
swords, and all kinds of weapons ! They'll kill you ! Do 
come down ! " 

The old man turned and left. When down with him, 
young Gorsuch could scarce draw breath, and the father 
looked more like a dead than a living man, so frightened 
were they at their supposed danger. The old man stood some 
time without saying anything; at last he said, as if solilo- 
quizing, " I want my property, and I will have it." 

Kline broke forth, " If you don't give up by fair means, 
you will have to by foul." 

I told him we would not surrender on any conditions. 

Young Gorsuch then said, — " Don't ask them to give up, 
— make them do it. We have money, and can call men to 
take them. What is it that money won't buy ? " 

Then said Kline, — "I am getting tired waiting on you ; 
I see you are not going to give up." 



Parker's own story. 109 

He then wrote a note and handed it to Joshua Gorsuch, 
saying at the same time, — " Take it, and bring a hundred 
men from Lancaster." 

As he started, I said, — " See here ! When you go to 
Lancaster, don't bring a hundred men, — bring five hundred. 
It will take all the men in Lancaster to change our purpose or 
take us alive." 

He stopped to confer with Kline, when Pinckney said, 
"We had better give up." 

" You are getting afraid," said I. 

" Yes," said Kline, " give up like men. The rest would 
give up if it were not for you." 

"I am not afraid," said Pinckney; "but where is the 
sense in fighting against so many men, and only five of us?" 

The whites, at this time, were coming from all quarters, 
and Kline was enrolling them as fast as they came. Their 
numbers alarmed Pinckney, and I told him to go and sit 
down ; but he said, " ISTo, I will go down stairs." 

I told him, if he attempted it, I should be compelled to 
blow out his brains. " Don't believe that any living man can 
take you," I said. " Don't give up to any slaveholder." 

To Abraham Johnson, who was near me, I then turned. 
He declared he was not afraid. " I will fight till I die," he 
said. 

At this time, Hannah, Pinckney's wife, had become im- 
patient of our persistent course; and my wife, who brought 
me her message urging us to surrender, seized a corn-cutter, 
and declared she would cut off the head of the first one who 
should attempt to give up. 

Another one of Gorsuch's slaves was coming along the high- 
road at this time, and I beckoned to him to go around. Pinck- 
ney saw him, and soon became more inspired. Elijah Lewis, 
a Quaker, also came along about this time : I beckoned to him, 
likewise ; but he came straight on, and was met by Kline, who 
ordered him to assist him. Lewis asked for his authority. 



110 THE CHKISTIANA EIOT. 

and Kline handed him the warrant. While Lewis was read- 
ing, Castner Hanway came up, and Lewis handed the warrant 
to him. Lewis asked Kline what Parker said. 

Kline replied, " He won't give up." 

Then Lewis and Hanway both said to the Marshal, — " If 
Parker says thej will not give up, you had better let them 
alone, for he will kill some of you. We are not going to risk 
our lives " — and they turned to go away. 

While they were talking, I came down and stood in the 
doorway, my men following behind. 

Old Mr. Gorsuch said, when I appeared, " They'll come 
out, and get away ! " and he came back to the gate. 

I then said to him, — " You said you could and would take 
us. !Now you have the chance." 

They were a cowardly-looking set of men. 

Mr. Gorsuch said, " You can't come out here." 

" Why ? " said I. " This is my place. I pay rent for it. 
I'll let you see if I can't come out." 

" I don't care if you do pay rent for it," said he. " If you 
come out, I will give you the contents of these" — present- 
ing, at the same time, two revolvers, one in each hand. 

I said, " Old man, if you don't go away, I will break your 
neck." 

I then walked up to where he stood his arms resting on the 
gate, trembling as if afflicted with palsy, and laid my hand 
on his shoulder, saying, " I have seen pistols before to-day." 
Kline now came running up, and entreated Gorsuch to come 
away. 

" ]^o," said the latter, " I will have my property, or go to 
hell." 

" What do you intend to do ? " said Kline to me. 

'* I intend to fight," said I. "I intend to try your 
strength." 

" If you will withdraw your men," he replied, " I will with- 
draw mine." 



PARKER S OWN STORY. 



Ill 



I told him it was too late. " You would not withdraw 
when you had the chance, — you shall not now." 

Kline then went back to Hanway and Lewis. Gorsuch 
made a signal to his men, and they all fell into line. I fol- 
lowed his example as well as I could ; but as we were not more 
than ten paces apart, it was difficult to do so. At this time 
we numbered but ten, while there were between thirty and 
forty of the white men. 

While I was talking to Gorsuch, his son said, "Father, 
will you take all this from a nigger ? " 

I answered him by saying that I respected old age ; but 
that, if he would repeat that, I should knock his teeth down 
his throat. At this he fired upon me, and I ran up to him 
and knocked the pistol out of his hand, when he let the other 
one fall and ran in the field. 

My brother-in-law, who was standing near, then said, "I 
can stop him" — and with his double-barrel gun he fired. 

Young Gorsuch fell, but rose and ran on again. Pinckney 
fired a second time and again Gorsuch fell, but was soon up 
again aiid, running into the cornfield, lay do^vn in the 
fence corner. 

I returned to my men, and found Samuel Thompson talk- 
ing to old Mr. Gorsuch, his master. They were both angry. 

" Old man, you had better go home to Maryland," said 
Samuel. 

"You had better give up, and come home with me," said 
the old man. 

Thompson took Pinckney's gun from him, struck Gor- 
such, and brought him to his knees. Gorsuch rose and sig- 
nalled to his men. Thompson then knocked him down again, 
and he again rose. At this time all the white men opened 
fire, and we rushed upon them; when they turned, threw 
down their guns and ran away. AVe, being closely engaged, 
clubbed our rifles. We were too closely pressed to fire, but 
we found a good deal could be done with empty guns. 



112 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

Old Mr. Gorsuch was the bravest of his party; he held on 
to his pistols until the last, while all the others threw away 
their weapons. I saw as many as three at a time fighting with 
him. Sometimes he was on his knees, then on his back, and 
again his feet would be where his head should be. He was a 
fine soldier and a brave man. Whenever he saw the least 
opportunity, he would take aim. While in close quarters 
with the whites, we could load and fire but two or three 
times. Our guns got bent and out of order. So damaged did 
they become, that we could shoot with but two or three of 
them. Samuel Thompson bent his gun on old Mr. Gorsuch so 
badly, that it was of no use to us. 

When the white men ran, they scattered. I ran after 
K'athan ISTelson, but could not catch him. I never saw a man 
run faster. Returning, I saw Joshua Gorsuch coming, and 
Pinckney behind him. I reminded him that he would like 
"to take hold of a nigger." told him that now was his 
" chance," and struck him a blow on the side of the head, 
which stopped him. Pinckney came up behind, and gave 
him a blow which brought him to the ground; as the others 
passed, they gave him a kick or jumped upon him, until 
the blood oozed out at his ears. 

IsFicholas Hutchings and jSTathan jSTelson of Baltimore 
County, Maryland, could outrun any men I ever saw. They 
and Kline were not brave, like the Gorsuches. Could our 
men have got them, they would have been satisfied. 

One of our men ran after Dr. Pierce, as he richly deserved 
attention ; but Pierce caught up vdth Castner Hanway, who 
rode between the fugitive and the Doctor, to shield him 
and some others. Hanway was told to get out of the way, 
or he would forfeit his life; he went aside quickly, and the 
man fired at the Marylander, but missed him, — he was too 
far off. I do not know whether he was wounded or not; but 
I do know that, if it had not been for Hanway, he would 
have been killed. 



parkee's own story. 113 

Having driven the slavocrats off in every direction, our 
party now turned towards their several homes. Some of us, 
however, went back to my house, where we found several 
of the neighbors. 

The scene at the house beggars description. Old Mr. Gor- 
such was lying in the yard in a pool of blood, and confusion 
reigned both inside and outside of the house. 

Levi Pownall said to me, " The weather is so hot and the 
flies are so bad, will you give me a sheet to put over the 
corpse ? " 

In reply, I gave him permission to get anything he 
needed from the house. 

" Dickinson Gorsuch is lying in the fence-corner, and I 
believe he is dying. Give me something for him to drink," 
said Pownall, who seemed to be acting the part of the Good 
Samaritan. 

When he returned from ministering to Dickinson, he told 
me he could not live. 

The riot, so called, was now entirely ended. The elder 
Gorsuch was dead; his son and nephew were both wounded, 
and I have reason to believe others were, — how many, it 
would be difficult to say. Of our party, only two were wounded. 
One received a ball in his hand, near the wrist; but it only 
entered the skin, and he pushed it out with his thumb. An- 
other received a ball in the fleshy part of his thigh, which 
had to be extracted; but neither of them were sick or crip- 
pled by the wounds. When young Gorsuch fired at me in the 
early part of the battle, both balls passed through my hat, 
cutting off my hair close to the skin, but they drew no blood. 
The marks were not more than an inch apart. 

A story was afterwards circulated that Mr. Gorsuch shot 
his own slave, and in retaliation his slave shot him; but it 
was without foundation. His slave struck him the first and 
second blows ; then three or four sprang upon him, and, when 
he became helpless, left him to pursue others. The women 
8 



114 THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 

jput an end to him. His slaves, so far from meeting death 
at his hands, are all still living. 

After the fight, my wife was obliged to secrete herself, 
leaving the children in care of her mother, and to the chari- 
ties of our neighbors. I was questioned by my friends as 
to what I should do, as they were looking for officers to arrest 
me. I determined not to be taken alive, and told them so ; 
but, thinking advice as to our future course necessary, went 
to see some old friends and consult about it. Their advice 
was to leave, as, were we captured and imprisoned, they 
could not foresee the result. Acting upon this hint, we set out 
for home, when we met some female friends, who told us 
that forty or fifty armed men were at my house, looking for 
me, and that we had better stay away from the place, if 
we did not want to be taken. Abraham Johnson and Pinck- 
ney hereupon halted, to agree upon the best course, while I 
turned around and went another way. 

Before setting out on my long journey northward, I de- 
termined to have an interview with my family, if possible, 
and to that end changed my course. As we went along the 
road to where I found them, we met men in companies of 
three and four, who had been drawn together by the excite- 
ment. On one occasion, we met ten or twelve together. They 
all left the road, and climbed over the fences into fields to 
let us pass; and then after we had passed, turned, and 
looked after us as far as they could see. Had we been 
carrying destruction to all human kind, they could not 
have acted more absurdly. We went to a friend's house 
and stayed for the rest of the day, and until nine o'clock that 
night when we set out for Canada. 

The great trial now was to leave my wife and family. Un- 
certain as to the result of the journey, I felt I would rather 
die than be separated from them. It had to be done, how- 
ever; and we went forth with heavy hearts, outcasts for 
the sake of liberty. When we had walked as far as Christi- 



pakker's own story. 115 

ana, we saw a large crowd, late as it was, to some of whom, 
at least, I must have been known, as we heard distinctly, 
" A'n't that Parker ? " 

"Yes," was answered, "that's Parker." 

Kline was called for, and he, with some nine or ten more, 
followed after. We stopped, and then they stopped. One 
said to his comrades, "Go on, — that's him." And another 
replied, " You go." So they contended for a time who should 
come to us. At last they went back. I was sorry to see 
them go back, for I wanted to meet Kline and end the day's 
transactions. 

We went on unmolested to Penningtonville ; and, in conse- 
quence of the excitement, thought best to continue on to 
Parkesburg. Nothing worth mention occurred for a time. 
We proceeded to Downingtown, and thence six miles be- 
yond, to the house of a friend. We stopped with him on 
Saturday night, and on the evening of the 14th went fifteen 
miles farther. Here I learned from a preacher, directly 
from the city, that the excitement in Philadelphia was too 
great for us to risk our safety by going there. Another man 
present advised us to go to J^orristown. 

At l!^orristown we rested a day. The friends gave us ten 
dollars, and sent us in a vehicle to Quakertown. Our driver, 
being partly intoxicated, set us down at the wrong place, 
which obliged us to stay out all night. At eleven o'clock the 
next day we got to Quakertown. We had gone about six 
miles out of the way, and had to go directly across the 
country. We rested the IGth, and set out in the evening 
for Friendsville. 

A friend piloted us some distance, and we travelled until 
we became very tired, when we went to bed under a haystack. 
On the 17th, we took breakfast at an inn. We passed a small 
village, and asked a man whom we met with a dearborn, what 
would be his charge to Windgap. " One dollar and fifty 



116 THE CHEISTIANA KIOT. 

cents," was the ready answer. So in we got, and rode to that 
place. 

As we wanted to make some inquiries when we strnck the 
north and south road, I went into the post-office, and asked for 
a letter for John Thomas, which of course I did not get. The 
postmaster scrutinized us closely, — more so, indeed, than 
any one had done on the Blue Mountains, — but informed us 
that Friendsville was between forty and fifty miles away. 
After going about nine miles, we stopped in the evening of the 
18th at an inn, got supper, were politely served, and had an 
excellent night's rest. On the next day we set out for Tan- 
nersville, hiring a conveyance for twenty-two miles of the 
way. We had no further difficulty on the entire road to 
Rochester, — more than five hundred miles by the route we 
travelled. 

Some amusing incidents occurred, however, which it may 
be well to relate in this connection. The next morning, after 
stopping at the tavern, we took the cars and rode to Homer- 
ville, where, after waiting an hour, as our landlord of the 
night previous had directed us, we took stage. Being the first 
applicants for tickets, we secured inside seats, and, from the 
number of us, we took up all of the places inside ; but, another 
traveller coming, I tendered him mine, and rode with the 
driver. The passenger thanked me; but the driver, a churl, 
and the most prejudiced person I ever came in contact with, 
would never wait after a stop until I could get on, but would 
drive away, and leave me to swing, climb, or cling on to the 
stage as best I could. Our traveller, at last noticing his be- 
havior, told him promptly not to be so fast, but let all pas- 
sengers get on, which had the effect to restrain him a little. 

At Big Eddy we took the cars. Directly opposite me sat a 
gentleman, who, on learning that I was for Rochester, said he 
was going there too, and afterwards proved an agreeable trav- 
elling companion. 

A newsboy came in with papers, some of which the pas- 



paeker's own stoky. 117 

sengers bought. Upon opening them, they read of the fight at 
Christiana. 

" O, see here ! " said my neighbor ; " great excitement at 
Christiana ; a — a statesman killed, and his son and nephew 
badly wounded." 

After reading, the passengers began to exchange opinions 
on the case. Some said they would like to catch Parker, and 
get the thousand dollars reward offered by the State ; but the 
man opposite to me said, " Parker must be a powerful man." 

I thought to myself, " If you could tell what I can, you 
could judge about that." 

Pinckney and Johnson became alarmed, and wanted to 
leave the cars at the next stopping-place ; but I told them there 
was no danger. I then asked particularly about Christiana, 
where it was, on what railroad, and other questions, to all of 
which I received correct replies. One of the men became so 
much attached to me, that, when we would go to an eating- 
saloon, he would pay for both. At Jefferson we thought of 
leaving the cars, and taking the boat ; but they told us to keep 
on the cars, and we would get to Eochester by nine o'clock the 
next night. 

We left Jefferson about four o'clock in the morning, and 
arrived at Rochester at nine the same morning. Just before 
reaching Eochester, when in conversation with my travelling 
friend, I ventured to ask what would be done with Parker, 
should he be taken. 

" I do not know," he replied ; " but the laws of Pennsyl- 
vania would not hang him, — they might imprison him. But 
it would be different, very different, should they get him into 
Maryland. The people in all the Slave States are so pre- 
judiced against colored people, that they never give them jus- 
tice. But I don't believe they will get Parker. I think he is 
in Canada by this time; at least, I hope so, — for I believe 
he did right and, had I been in his place, I would have done 
as he did. Any good citizen will say the same. I believe 



118 THE CHKISTIANA EIOT. 

Parker to be a brave man ; and all jou colored people should 
look at it as we white people look at our brave men, and do 
as we do. You see Parker was not fighting for a country, nor 
for praise. He was fighting for freedom: he only wanted 
liberty, as other men do. You colored people should protect 
him, and remember him as long as you live. We are coming 
near our parting-place, and I do not know if we shall ever 
meet again. I shall be in Rochester some two or three days 
before I return home ; and I would like to have your company 
back." 

I told him it would be some time before we returned. 

The cars then stopped, when he bade me good by. As 
strange as it may appear, he did not ask me my name; and 
I was afraid to inquire his, from fear he would. 

On leaving the cars, after walking two or three squares, 
we overtook a colored man, who conducted us to the house 
of a friend of mine. He welcomed me at once, as we were 
acquainted before, took me up stairs to wash and comb, and 
prepare, as he said, for company. 

As I was combing, a lady came up and said, "Which of 
you is Mr. Parker ? " 

" I am," said I, — " what there is left of me." 

She gave me her hand, and said, "And this is William 
Parker ! " 

She appeared to be so excited that she could not say what 
she wished to. We were told we would not get much rest, 
and we did not; for ^dsitors were constantly coming. One 
gentleman was surprised that we got away from the cars, as 
spies were all about, and there were two thousand dollars re- 
ward for the party. 

We left at eight o'clock that evening, in a carriage, for 
the boat, bound for Kingston in Canada. As we went on 
board, the bell was ringing. After walking about a little, a 
friend pointed out to me the officers on the " hunt " for us ; 
and just as the boat pushed off from the wharf, some of our 



paekek's ow]sr story. 119 

friends on shore called me by name. Our pursuers looked 
very much like fools, as they were. I told one of the gentle- 
men on shore to write to Kline that I was in Canada. Ten 
dollars were generously contributed by the Rochester friends 
for our expenses ; and altogether their kindness was heartfelt, 
and was most gratefully appreciated by us. 

Once on the boat, and fairly out at sea towards the land of 
liberty, my mind became calm, and my spirits very much 
depressed at thought of my wife and children. Before, I had 
little time to think much about them, my mind being on my 
journey. ISI'ow I became silent and abstracted. Although 
fond of company, no one was company for me now. 

We landed at Kingston on the 21st of September, at six 
o'clock in the morning, and walked around for a long time, 
without meeting any one we had ever known. At last, how- 
ever, I saw a colored man I knew in Maryland. He at first 
pretended to have no knowledge of me, but finally recognized 
me. I made known our distressed condition when he said he 
was not going home then, but, if we would have breakfast, he 
would pay for it. How different the treatment received from 
this man — himself an exile for the sake of liberty, and in its 
full enjoyment on free soil — and the self-sacrificing spirit of 
our Rochester colored brother, who made haste to welcome us 
to his ample home, — the well-earned reward of his faithful 
labors ! 

On Monday evening, the 23d, we started for Toronto, 
where we arrived safely the next day. Directly after landing, 
we heard that Governor eTohnston, of Pennsylvania, had 
made a demand on the Governor of Canada for me, under the 
Extradition Treaty. Pinckney and Johnson advised me to 
go to the country, and remain where I should not be known ; 
but I refused. I intended to see what they would do with 
me. Going at once to the Government House, I entered the 
first office I came to. The official requested me to be seated. 
The following is the substance of the conversation between us, 



120 THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 

as near as I can remember. I told him I had heard that 
Governor Johnston, of Pennsylvania, had requested his gov- 
ernment to send me back. At this he came forward, held 
forth his hand, and said, " Is this Wililam Parker ? " 

I took his hand, and assured him I was the man. When he 
started to come, I thought he was intending to seize me, and 
I prepared myself to knock him down. His genial sympa- 
thetic manner it was that convinced me he meant well. 

He made me sit down, and said — "Yes, they want you 
back again. Will you go?" 

" I will not be taken back alive," said I. " I ran away 
from my master to be free, — I have run from the United 
States to be free. I am now going to stop running." 

" Are you a fugitive from labor ? " he asked. 

I told him I was. 

"Why," he answered, "they say you are a fugitive from 
justice." He then asked me where my master lived. 

I told him, " In Anne Arundel County, Maryland." 

" Is there such a county in Maryland ? " he asked. 

" There is," I answered. 

He took down a map, examined it, and said, " You are 
right." 

I then told him the name of the farm, and my master's 
name. Further questions bearing upon the country towns 
near, the nearest river, etc., followed, all of which I an- 
swered to his satisfaction. 

"How does it happen," he then asked, "that you lived 
in Pennsylvania so long, and no person knew you were a 
fugitive from labor ? " 

"I do not get other people to keep my secrets, sir," I 
replied. " My brother and family only knew that I had 
been a slave." 

He then assured me that I would not, in his opinion, have 
to go back. Many coming in at this time on business, I was 
told to call again at three o'clock, which I did. The person 



Parker's own story. 121 

in the office, a clerk, told me to take no further trouble 
about it, until that day four weeks. " But you are as free a 
man as I am," said he. When I told the news to Pinckney 
and Johnson, they were greatly relieved in mind. 

I ate breakfast with the greatest relish, got a letter written 
to a friend in Chester County for my wife, and set about 
arrangements to settle at or near Toronto. 

We tried hard to get work, but the task was difficult. I 
think three weeks elapsed before we got work that could be 
called work. Sometimes we would secure a small job, worth 
two or three shillings, and sometimes a smaller one, worth 
not more than one shilling; and these not oftener than once 
or twice in a week. We became greatly discouraged; and, 
to add to my misery, I was constantly hearing some alarm- 
ing report about my wife and children. Sometimes they 
had carried her back into slavery, — sometimes the children, 
and sometimes the entire party. Then there would come a 
contradiction. I was soon so completely worn down by my 
fears for them, that I thought my heart would break. To 
add to my disquietude, no answer came to my letters, although 
I went to the office regularly every day. At last I got a letter 
with the glad news that my wife and children were safe, and 
would be sent to Canada. I told the person reading for me 
to stop, and tell them to send her " right now," — I could 
not wait to hear the rest of the letter. 

Two months from the day I landed in Toronto, my wife 
arrived, but without the children. She had had a very bad 
time. Twice they had her in custody; and, a third time, 
her young master came after her, which obliged her to flee 
before day, so that the children had to remain behind for the 
time. I was so fflad to see her that I fora'ot about the 
children. 

The day my wife came, I had nothing but the clothes on 
my back, and was in debt for my board, without any work 
to depend upon. My situation was truly distressing. I took 



122 THE CHEISTIAlSrA EIOT. 

the resolution, and went to a store where I made known my 
circumstances to the proprietor, offering to work for him to 
pay for some necessaries. He readily consented, and I sup- 
plied myself with bedding, meal and flour. As I had selected 
a place before, we went that evening about two miles into the 
country, and settled ourselves for the winter. 

When in Kingston, I had heard of the Buxton settlement, 
and of the Revds. Dr. Willis and Mr. King, the agents. My 
informant, after stating all the particulars, induced me to 
think it was a desirable place ; and having quite a little sum 
of money due to me in the States, I wrote for it, and waited 
until May. It not being sent, I called upon Dr. Willis, 
who treated me kindly. I proposed to settle in Elgin, if he 
would loan means for the first instalment. He said he 
would see about it, and I should call again. On my second 
visit, he agTeed to assist me, and proposed that I should get 
another man to go on a lot with me. 

Abraham Johnson and I arranged to settle together, and, 
with Dr. Willis's letter to Mr. King on our behalf, I em- 
barked with my family on a schooner for the West. After 
five days' sailing, we reached Windsor. ISTot having the 
means to take us to Chatham, I called upon Henry Bibb, and 
laid my case before him. He took us in, treated us with 
great politeness, and afterwards took me with him to Detroit, 
where, after an introduction to some friends, a purse of five 
dollars was made up. I divided the money among my com- 
panions, and started them for Chatham, but was obliged to 
stay at Windsor and Detroit two days longer. 

While stopping at Windsor, I went again to Detroit, with 
two or three friends, when, at one of the steamboats just 
landed, some officers arrested three fugitives, on pretence of 
being horse thieves. I was satisfied they were slaves, and 
said so, when Henry Bibb went to the telegraph office and 
learned through a message that they were. In the crowd 
and excitement, the sheriff threatened to imprison me for 



paekee's own story. 123 

my interference. I felt indignant, and told him to do so, 
whereupon he opened the door. About this time there was 
more excitement, and then a man slipped into the jail, unseen 
hj the officers, opened the gate, and the three prisoners went 
out, and made their escape to Windsor. I stopped through 
that night in Detroit, and started the next day for Chatham, 
where I found my family snugly provided for at a boarding- 
house kept by Mr. Younge. 

Chatham was a thriving town at that time, and the genuine 
liberty enjoyed by its numerous colored residents pleased me 
greatly; but our destination was Buxton, and thither we 
went on the following day. We arrived there in the evening, 
and I called immediately upon Mr. King, and presented Dr. 
Willis's letter. He received me very politely, and said that, 
after I should feel rested, I could go out and select a lot. He 
also kindly offered to give me meal and pork for my family, 
until I could get work. 

In due time, Johnson and I each chose a fifty-acre lot for 
although when in Toronto we agreed with Dr. Willis to take 
one lot between us, when we saw the land we thought we 
could pay for two lots. I got the money in a little time, 
and paid the Doctor back. I built a house, and we moved 
into it that same fall, and in it I live yet. (1866.) 

When I first settled in Buxton, the white settlers in the 
vicinity were much opposed to colored people. Their preju- 
dices were very strong; but the spread of intelligence and 
religion in the community has wrought a great change in 
them. Prejudice is fast being uprooted; indeed, they do not 
appear like the same people that they were. In a short time 
I hope the foul spirit will depart entirely. 

I have now to bring my narrative to a close ; and in so 
doing I would return thanks to Almighty God for the many 
mercies and favors he has bestowed upon me, and especially 
for delivering me out of the hands of slaveholders, and plac- 
ing me in a land of liberty, where I can worship God under 



124 THE CHRISTIANA EIOT. 

my own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest or make me 
afraid. I am also particularly thankful to my old friends and 
neighbors in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, — to the 
friends in I^orristown, Quakertown, Rochester, and Detroit, 
and to Dr. Willis of Toronto, for their disinterested benevo- 
lence and kindness to me and my family. When hunted, 
they sheltered me; when hungry and naked, they clothed 
and fed me; and when a stranger in a strange land, they 
aided and encouraged me. May the Lord in his great 
mercy remember and bless them, as they remembered and 
blessed me. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
Aftek the Wae. 

Peter Woods the Sole Survivor — Castner Hanway 's Later Days — The 
Descendants and Relatives of the Principal Actors in the Drama — 
Concluding Eeflections on the Affair. 

The sole survivor of those who were directly involved in 
the events that have been narrated is Peter Woods, a very 
resjoectable colored man, who does not know his own age, but 
who likely is an octog'enarian and was twenty years old when 
the riot occurred. He lives on his little farm of fifty-eight 
acres, in Colerain Township, just south of Bartville, with his 
good wife, and the youngest of his thirteen living children, 
the family being much esteemed by those who know its mem- 
bers. He was a soldier in the Union Army, having served 
nearly three years in the Third Regiment, Colored TJ. S. 
Infantry. During the war he met Alex. Pinckney, at 
Charleston, S. C, who was also a soldier in one of the ISTorth- 
ern regiments. Recently his pension was increased through 
the influence of Congressman W. W. Griest, of the Lancaster 
district — who is a son of Major Ellwood Griest, author of 
the vigorous Bart resolutions of 1850. In the absence of 
precise proof that Peter Woods was above seventy-five years 
of age, the United States Government assumed that it would 
not have indicted a boy of fifteen for treason. 

The descendants of Edward Gorsuch maintain the high 
social station of their family in Maryland. They were 
Methodists in religion and Whigs in politics, and are now 
Republicans; during the civil war they zealously supported 
the Union cause. 

Edward Gorsuch's immediate descendants are Mrs. W. 
W. Campbell and children, of Orwig's Mills, Md. ; Mrs. T. B. 

125 



126 



THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 



Todd, Jr., of Fort Howard, Md., who is a daughter of Alex. 
Morrison ; Mrs. E. D. Duncan, of Govans, Md. ; Mrs. Fannie 
Thomas, Wilmer Black and Anna Black, the last four being 
children of Melinda Gorsuch, intermarried with Robert 
Black; and Mrs. R. F. Mitchell, wife of Dr. F. G. Mitchell, 
of Glencoe, Md. (who was the daughter of Dickinson Gor- 
such), her son and two daughters, the youngest of whom, as 
an infant, appears in the arms of "Mammy" Kelly, one of 
the illustrations of this volume. 

Joseph Scarlet died July 8, 1882; his descendants are as 
follows : 

I. Children — Joseph Scarlett, 5313 Master Street, Phila- 
delphia; Annie V. Scarlett, Mary E. Scarlett, 1413 Peach 
Street, Philadelphia ; William Scarlett, 5444 Girard Avenue, 
Philadelphia; Mrs. Ella A. Jackson, 304 North Franklin 
Street, West Chester, Pa. 

II. Grandchildren — J. Ralph Scarlett, Inda Scarlett 
Conrow, Elsie J. Scarlett, Edwin W. Scarlett, Anne Scarlett 
Custer, Dr. Charles J. Morell, Florence M. Christ, T. Harold 
Jackson, William Scarlett, Leslie Scarlett, Richard Scarlett. 

III. Great-grandchildren — Lavinia Scarlett, Helen Scar- 
lett, John S. Custer, Charles J. Morell, Jr. 

Elijah Lewis died Oct. 18, 1884, aged 86; his descend- 
ants are as follows : 

I. Children — Mrs. Martha A. Cooper, Palmyra, 1^. J. 

II. Grandchildren — Samuel Brinton, farmer, West Ches- 
ter, Pa., R, F. D. ; Henry Brinton, 2408 Bryn Mawr Avenue, 
West Philadelphia ; Edwin Brinton, 5584 Hunter Avenue, 
West Philadelphia ; Mrs. Emma B. Maule, R. F. D., Coch- 
ranville, Pa. ; Alfred Brinton, Christiana, Pa. ; Mrs. Clara 
B. Maule, Gum Tree, Chester County, Pa. ; Harry P. Cooper, 
14 Ruby Street, Lancaster, Pa. ; Mrs. D. W. Miller, Linfield, 
Montgomery County, Pa. ; Mrs. Anna Cooper, Santa Bar- 
bara, California ; Mrs. George Paschall, Jr., Port Kennedy, 
Pa., and Miss Mary Cooper, 2408 Bryn Mawr Avenue, West 
Philadelphia, Pa. (W. L. Cooper, superintendent of the 



AFTER THE WAE. 127 

Bedford division P. K. K., who recently met tragic death by 
drowning in the Susquehanna river, was a grandson.) 

III. Great Grandchildren — Roy Cooper, Fairmount, W. 
Va. ; Herbert Cooper, Parkesburg, Pa. ; Helen Cooper, Santa 
Barbara, Cal. ; Clement S. Brinton, 213 Euclid Avenue, Had- 
donfield, IST. J. ; Francis T>. Brinton, West Chester, Pa. ; 
Willard C. Brinton, 70 West 46th Street, "New York ; Ellen 
S. Brinton, E. F. D., West Chester, Pa. ; Robert F. Brinton, 
R. F. D., West Chester, Pa. ; Wilfred Cooper, Bedford, Pa. ; 
C. Burleigh Cooper, Christiana, Pa. ; Harry Brinton, 2408 
Bryn Mawr Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa. ; Lewis Brinton, 
Octoraro, Lancaster Co., Pa. ; Thomas Brinton, minister, Octo- 
raro. Pa. ; Mrs. Jesse Webster, Mrs. John Dochter, Christiana, 
Pa., and Evan J. LcAvis, George School, Bucks Co., Pa. 

Castner Hanway suffered most in expense and anxiety 
from the trial. He resided for years after it ended in Chester 
and Lancaster Counties, but in 1878 removed to Wilber, 
ISTebraska. His first wife, Martha, daughter of Jesse and 
Letitia Lamborn, who was with him during his trial, died 
August 20, 1855. Later he married Hannah, daughter of 
Moses and Mary Pennock, who died January 1, 1864. Later 
he married a Miss Johnston, a relative of Governor Johnston, 
who was the Chief Executive of Pennsylvania in 1851. She 
is still living. Castner Hanway himself died May 26, 
1893 ; his remains were brought East and buried in the ceme- 
tery at the famous Long-wood meeting house of the Pro- 
gressive Friends, in Chester County, made memorable by 
anti-slavery meetings addressed by Whittier, Lucretia Mott 
and others eminent in literature ; and in which quiet gi-ave- 
yard are the chaste tombs of Bayard Taylor, poet, novelist, 
traveler, journalist and diplomat, and of his brother. Colonel 
Frank Taylor, one of the heroes and martyrs of Gettysburg. 

The Long\vood Yearly Meeting soon after Hanway's death 
adopted a memorial prepared by Patience W. Kent, which 
said of him : 

" One week ago the earthly form of Castner Hanway was 



128 THE CHRISTIANA RIOT. 

laid in yonder cemetery. A quiet, unobtrusive man, lie gave 
no token that his name was one to conjure newspaper noto- 
riety, or stir the wrathful vengeance of the baffled slave power, 
as it did at one time. Yet in him, was the stuff of which 
heroes are made. ' He stood by his colors ' when that was all 
he could do." During the ninety-seven days that he was in 
prison he never once complained. He wrote to his wife from 
there, ' I do not regret my course ; I have simply done my 
duty.' With a nature capable of asserting such a beautiful 
sentiment in the face of so great mental and financial agony, 
surely the reward in the Eternal Kingdom would be : ' Well 
done, thou good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful 
over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things ; 
enter thou into the joys of thy Lord.' " 

Hanway left no descendants. His collateral relatives, so 
far as known, were : 

Jackson Hanway, deceased, a brother, whose children are : 
Ida Hanway Whiteside, Christiana, Pa. ; Ella Hanway Skel- 
ton, 1T25 Lindenwood Street, Philadelphia; Wilmer Everett 
Hanway, 1716 :N'orth 55th Street, Philadelphia. 

John Hanway, deceased, a brother, leaving a son, Joseph 
Hanway, Hamorton, Chester County, Pa. 

Ellis Hanway, deceased, a brother, whose children are: 
Mrs. Louisa Booth, Gap, Lancaster County, Pa., and William 
Hanway, 1038 Lowell Street, l^ew York City, 1^. Y. 

Washington Hanway, deceased, a brother, leaving one 
child, Mrs. Clara Hanway Pierce, 317 South Queen Street, 
York, Pa. 

Phoebe H. Gray, deceased, a sister, whose son is Albert 
Gray. 

Hannah Ellis H. Fairlamb, deceased, a sister, who left 
children : Elizabeth Barnes, West Chester, Pa. ; and Robert 
Fairlamb. 

Rebecca H. McDade, deceased, a sister, late of ISTorris- 
town. Pa. 



AFTEK, THE WAR. 



129 



"After Life's fitful fever" they who fought and suffered 
and died all " sleep well." " There is no work, nor device, nor 
knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave." While governments 
shall endure and organized society of human order shall con- 
tinue, the ceaseless contest will go on between Law and Lib- 
erty. As the temperaments of men vary they will differ 
as to which side of that struggle they should or will espouse ; 
and . Human Wisdom will forever be insufficient to avert 
occasional conflict. From it, however, will emerge Peace; 
and as the parties to the struggle and their children's children 
look back upon the contention that once raged, they will come 
more and more clearly to see that it was inevitable ; and they 
will look with kindlier judgment upon the motives which in- 
spired antagonistic forces. They will also see in the outcome 
and settlement a Final Cause, shaping events and determin- 
ing results, one that could not be recognized in the smoke and 
dust of the immediate battle ; but which the clear, cold light of 
History makes visible to all who would see the Truth. In 
his matchless lyric of the Civil War, the most sublime note 
that has been sounded from all the literature inspired by that 
great l^ational Crisis, Will M. Thompson, in his " High Tide 
at Gettysburg," attains this lofty strain : 

But who shall break the guards that wait 
Before the awful face of fate? 

The tattered standards of the South 

Were shriveled at the cannon 's mouth, 
. And all her hopes were desolate. 

In vain the Tennessean set 

His breast against the bayonet; 

In vain Virginia charged and raged, 

A tigress in her wrath uncaged, 
Till all the hill was red and wet ! 

Above the bayonets mixed and crossed 
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost 

Eeceding through the battle cloud, 

And heard across the tempest loud 
The death cry of a nation lost! 



130 THE CHRISTIANA RIOT. 

The brave went down! Without disgrace 
They leaped to ruin 's red embrace ; 
They only heard fame's thunder wake, 
And saw the dazzling sunburst break 
In smiles on Glory's bloody face! 

They fell who lifted up a hand! 

And bade the sun in heaven to stand; 
They smote and fell who set the bars 
Against the progress of the stars, 

And stayed the march of Motherland! 

They stood who saw the future come 
On through the fight's delirium; 

They smote and stood who held the hope 
Of nations on that slippery slope, 
Amid the cheers of Christendom! 

God lives! He forged the iron will, 
That clutched and held that trembling hill! 
God lives and reigns! He built and lent 
The heights for Freedom's battlement. 
Where floats her flag in triumph still! 

Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns! 

Love rules. Her gentler purpose runs, 
A mighty mother turns in tears 
The pages of her battle years, 

Lamenting all her fallen sons ! 



ADDENDA. 

Note A. 

On page 14 it is stated that there was little fellowship between the 
negro and the Pennsylvania-German elements of our local citizenship. 
I believe this is a continuing condition. It is not inconsistent with the 
historical fact that the Mennonites of Germantown were the first 
American Abolitionists; and that their deliverance of February 18, 
1868, antedated like action by the Friends. Professor Wilkinson in his 
so-called "Vindication of Daniel Webster," recently published, is 
authority for the statement that Charles Sumner 's social aversion to 
the colored race was as pronounced as his political sympathy with it. 

Note B. 

On page 27 it is stated upon information that William Parker was a 
soldier in the war for the Union. I have not been able to absolutely 
verify this statement. It is therefore qualified. 

Note C. 

On page 59 it is noticed that the venire issued to the marshal com- 
manding him to return 108 jurors for the term of the treason trial 
included a provision that twelve were to be summoned and returned 
from Lancaster County. This was in conformity with the Act of Sep- 
tember 24, 1789, known as the Federal Judicial Procedure Act, to the 
effect that "in eases punishable with death, the trial shall be had in 
the county where the offense was committed, or where that cannot be 
done without great inconvenience, twelve petit jurors at least shall be 
summoned from thence. ' ' 

In a recent notable address before the American Bar Association at 
Boston on August 30, 1911, Ex-Justice of the United States Supreme 
Court Henry E. Brown called attention to the fact that the provision of 
this act which required the trial for a capital offense to be held in the 
county where it occurred had never been observed. It seems to have 
escaped his notice that the statutory direction as to the venue was not 
unqualifiedly imperative and that this act had been the subject of 
repeated judicial construction, e. g., in the following cases: 

"The Circuit Courts are bound to try all crimes committed within the 
district, but not to try them in the County where committed; that is a 
matter of which they must judge in the exercise of their discretion." 
U. S. V. Wilson, Bald. 117; U. S. v. Cornell 2 Mason 95-8; U. S. v. 
Insurgents (Fries), 3 Dall. (Pa.) 513. In U. S. v. Cornell the Court 

131 



132 THE CHEISTIANA EIOT. 

holds that the third Section of the Act of March, 1793, Chapter 22, 
operates as a material modification of the Act of 1789 and leaves the 
place of the trial in the district to the sound discretion of the judge. 
The Act of 1793, Chapter 22, directs that special sessions for the trial 
of criminal cases shall be held at any convenient place within the 
district nearer to the place where the offenses may be said to be com- 
mitted, than the place appointed by the law for ordinary sessions. 

Note D. 

I have adopted the spelling of Sims's and Scarlet's name with a 
single terminal letter instead of the local and family usage — Simms and 
Scarlett — because they were thus formally indicted. 

Note E. 

The best information I have as to the date of William Parker 's revisit 
to Christiana is that it was during the presidential campaign of 1872. 
Peter Woods says he took back with him to Canada the widow of Henry 
Sims — one of the defendants in the treason case; presumably he was 
then a widower and Mrs. Sims became his second wife. 

Note F. 

On pages 6 and 12 I have recalled the indisputable fact that Abraham 
Lincoln and his party distinctly recognized the legal obligation of the 
Fugitive Slave Law even after the war had begun. Striking confirmation 
of what heedless readers may be disposed to doubt is found in General 
William T. Sherman's "Causes of the War," cited in the Atlantic 
Monthly, for September, 1911, where Sherman says: "Mr. Lincoln after 
election and installation, asserted repeatedly that slavery was safe in 
his hands, that he was sworn to enforce even the Fugitive Slave Law 
and soon Congress declared it had no intention to interfere with slavery 
in the States." 

Note G. 

A second and revised edition of this History, substantially bound and 
more copiously illustrated, will be put to press shortly. The author will 
appreciate the correction of any errors observed in this edition — hur- 
riedly put to press — as well as any additions to its statements of facts. 
Communications to this effect or orders for copies of the revised edition 
may be sent to Box 34, Lancaster, Pa. 



m PEisoisr FOE tkeaso^^. 

[One of the finest stanzas in American poetry was inspired by the 
imprisonment of Hanway and others for treason. While they were in 
Moyamensing, John G. Whittier wrote and published his "Lines" to 
them. Horace E. Scudder, in his excellent and complete "Cambridge 
edition" of "Whittier, classes the following with three other poems, 
"called out by the popular movement of Free State men to occupy the 
territory of Kansas. ' ' In this he is mistaken. This poem, now entitled 
"For Eighteousness ' Sake," was originally "inscribed to Friends under 
arrest for treason against the slave power, ' ' and was directed especially 
to Hanway, Lewis and Scarlet. The concluding stanza is deeply imbedded 
in popular appreciation of the best in our national literature.] 

The age is dull and mean. Men creep. 
Not walk; with blood too pale and tame 
To pay the debt they owe to shame; 

Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep 
Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; 

Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep 
Six days to Mammon, one to Cant. 

In such a time, give thanks to God, 

That somewhat of the holy rage 

With which the prophets in their age 
On all its decent seemings trod, 

Has set your feet upon the lie, 
That man and ox and soul and clod 

Are market stock to sell and buy! 

The hot words from your lips, my own. 

To caution trained, might not repeat ; 

But if some tares among the wheat 
Of generous thought and deed were sown, 

No common wrong provoked your zeal; 
The silken gauntlet that is thrown 

In such a quarrel rings like steel. 

The brave old strife the fathers saw 

For Freedom calls for men again 

Like those who battled not in vain 
For England's Charter, Alfred's law; 

133 



134 



THE CHEISTIANA RIOT. 

And right of speech and trial just 
Wage in your name their ancient war 
With venal courts and perjured trust. 



God's ways seem darTc., but soon or late, 

They touch the shining hills of day; 

The evil cannot hrooTc delay, 
The good can well afford to wait. 

Give ermined hnaves their hour of crime; 
Ye have the future grand and great, 

The safe appeal of Truth to Time! 



[The End] 



SEP 2S 1911 



LBJa'12 



THE CHRISTIANA RIOT 



AND 



THE TREASON TRIALS 
OF 1851 

AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 



BY 

W. U. HENSEL 



Prepared and Published for the Commemoration 
OF THESE Events, September 9, 191 1 



Press of 

The New Era Printing Company 

Lancaster, Pa. 

19II 



